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A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck

A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck

by Sophie Elmhirst

Riverhead Books ·2024 ·256 pages ·Biography
Top 25 Critics
Top of the Pile
Top of the Pile
I Index
78/99
Top of the Pile

93/99

Critics

Near the Top

64/99

Readers

n/a

Scholars

89/99

Rating

97/99

Volume

31/99

Rating

98/99

Volume

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About This Book

The electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits. Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He's a loner, awkward and obsessive; she's charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away? Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But Maurice began to study nautical navigation. Maralyn made detailed lists of provisions. And in June 1972, they set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves. What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can't run away from themselves. Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.


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Reviews

"A clear-eyed, insightful anatomy of a marriage."

Chris Hewitt· The Minneapolis Star Tribune Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"So much more than a shipwreck tale."

Laurie Hertzel· The Boston Globe Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"In Elmhirst's delicate, humane depiction of the couple, her choice of narrative framing, her pacing and her compassion, she renders A Marriage at Sea an act of beauty in its own right."

Blair Braverman· The New York Times Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Elmhirst is drawn to what makes a marriage function, even thrive, despite punishing circumstances."

Hamilton Cain· The Wall Street Journal Top of the Pile

"Few nonfiction books get a reader's adrenaline pumping quite like Sophie Elmhirst's A Marriage at Sea ..."

Leigh Haber· The Washington Post Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

"Elmhirst sets her reader down inside a world that is both tiny and vast, at once ruthlessly monotonous and violently unpredictable ..."

Jessica Winter· The New Yorker Read review ↗ Top of the Pile

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