What I Read on my Sailing Vacation May-June 2025

An Inspiring Recovery by Neil McCarthy  This is a very honest and brave memoir by a man who endured a psychotic break when he was 19 and in college. He had everything going for him, the grades, the bod, the friends, and then the sexual abuse he endured as a young child caught up to him in a spectacularly awful way. He takes us through what it was like to learn to manage his condition. He detailed his ups and downs, his successes and failures, and how he learned his own strategies to manage his condition but to also accept himself and his condition. This was an incredible story and I sincerely hope that more people with bipolar who are recovering from childhood trauma will read it. This book is full of hope, and it’s full of “You’re not alone, you can do it, here’s how I did it.” Very well done.

Looking for Smoke by KA Cobell Thousands of women from American and Canadian indigenous tribes have gone missing. And this is a problem that largely goes unnoticed. This book is about a group of Blackfoot teens who are being investigated because two girls, their peers, have gone missing and were murdered. Awesome story and it kept me guessing until the end.

 

Anita de Monte Laughs Last by Xochitl Gonzalez  This story is told in two perspectives, one from an up and coming artist from the 1970s named Anita de Monte who was killed by her more famous artist husband. Everyone knew he killed her but he was acquitted. And the other perspective is an art history student at Brown named Raquel. Raquel struggles with being latino on a campus that is mostly white in the 90s and finding her place in a world where people assume she didn’t earn her spot just like every one else. We learn of Anita’s story, a Cuban refugee, finding her own place in the predominately white art world. Raquel discovers Anita while studying her husband and becomes fascinated with the story of what happened to Anita before and after her death. A very inventive story.

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead OK, I was pretty into this one and I read it on my June offshore sailing trip. It’s not a true story, but based upon real events. Marian Graves is a twin growing up near Missoula, Montana. She and her brother lost their mother in a ship sinking accident at which her father was the captain, and later jailed for his failure in sinking the ship. As she grows up, raised by an uncle, she becomes obsessed with becoming a pilot. She works as a booze runner during prohibition to earn for her pilot lessons, when a rival bootlegger decides to pay for her lessons. But there are strings attached. It’s all about how this woman has to figure out how to get to where she wants as a woman learning to do things that men typically only do, all with this benefactor who ultimately wants to ground her and keep her all to himself. It was an awesome book.