Lifesaving lessons : notes from an accidental mother by Linda Greenlaw

Lifesaving lessons : notes from an accidental mother

Linda Greenlaw
260 pages
Viking, 2013.
Jan 1971
Biographies & Memoirs WSBN
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&quot;Famed swordfish boat captain Linda Greenlaw faces her greatest battle with nature--a newly adopted teenage daughter Linda Greenlaw isn't a woman who shies away from a challenge--a nationally renowned swordfish boat captain made famous in the film &quot;The Perfect Storm,&quot; Greenlaw is also a bestselling author and a television celebrity. Through hard work and determination, she had created a life of peaceful independence, living on a rugged island off the coast of Maine. Then came Mariah. A troubled fifteen-year-old, Mariah arrives on the island to stay with her uncle, an island newcomer and seemingly normal guy. The entire community is rocked when it is revealed that Mariah has suffered terrible abuse at his hands, and the island comes together to rescue the teenager from further harm. Alone and at risk, Mariah needs a guardian and the island residents nominate Linda, who is not exactly the picture of maternal warmth. A remarkably candid and tenderly funny memoir, &quot;Lifesaving Lessons&quot; follows this unexpected mother-daughter pair as they navigate their new life together, learning to trust themselves and each other and forge the loving family that neither of them knew they needed.&quot;--<p>&quot;Life was pretty good for Linda Greenlaw. Her job and her lifestyle gave her the independence and freedom she so craved, she had a good relationship, and a blissful quiet home. And then one day the peace she so craved and valued that was an integral part of life on her beloved island was shattered. Enter Mariah, the fifteen-year-old niece of an island newcomer. She was a troubled girl from a broken home. In a startling and frightening turn of events, Mariah revealed that she had been subject to grave abuses at the hands of her uncle and had to escape. Linda finds herself suddenly the legal guardian and de-facto mother figure for a surly, neglected, and deeply frightened teenage girl&quot;--
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I like Linda Greenlaw's writing, and if you haven't yet read "The Hungry Ocean," do so. I never met a person who didn't like that book. Ms Greenlaw is a very good writer. She is good with dialog, and she can make a memoir read like a novel. "Lifesaving Lessons: Notes from an Accidental Mother" was a page turner I couldn't put down. Now I understand that, if Ms Greenlaw is passionate about something, her writing goes beyond good - way beyond. I have always paid attention to Linda Greenlaw. I, too, live on what we in Maine call "an unbridged island." Or as we sometimes say, a "real" island. (Even at its lowest population, however, ours was 10 times as big as Isle au Haut and had ferry service several times a day.) The huge advantage of living on an island where everyone knows everyone is just that. You know the whole person, not just the work person or the fishing person or the innkeeping person. You know what they are like waking up in the morning. You understand how they react to adversity or joy or illness or birth or death. You see them at meals or parties or school events. Always the same people. Ken and his niece, though from away, had lived several years on Isle au Haute. The niece, Mariah (sigh of relief here - not her real name) had worked in the summer for Linda. The author builds up carefully to the awful discovery that Mariah was sexually abused and had no one in the world to turn to. Beyond that discovery were more discoveries, each worse than the last, about Mariah's family and "uncle." The book talks, not just about the effects on Mariah - effects that negatively showed up in her personality. The actual effect on her island was bad too. It made people more suspicious of strangers and even one another. How they all worked their respective ways through this is the stuff of novels, but it is also the stuff of real life. I love the book - Greenlaw's best yet. Read more

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About this book
Pages 260
Publisher Viking, 2013.
Published 1971
Readers 3