Blog - Elizabeth Garber

BlogElizabeth Admin2022-04-27T17:02:55-04:00

Stories on Instagram

On Instagram you can follow little stories I write about my 93 year old mom’s adventures, about books I’m reading and updates about my new book.

I couldn't stop her. I said, it's 40 degrees, and

I couldn't stop her. I said, it's 40 degrees, and really blustery. She said I need to get out of the house and walk the bridge. We drove down the hill and the bay was high tide, rippling with white caps, and she was determined.

It's my new thick polartec tights I'd loaned her to try out. With my tights, she was invincible and warm in that wind. I'll never get those tights back now! She made it half way across before we turned back.

Then we drove into town and I showed her our window for the Locally Grown Books Pop Up book sale and readings party next Saturday 10-3.

My mom was still talking over all the Thanksgiving family visitors, a feast of cousins, sons, in laws, grand and great grand kids, that is still keeping her warm, and will carry her a long way into the long winter ahead. .

Thrilled to be reviewed by Maine’s respected boo

Sid from Camden has been an amazing sailor all her

Sid from Camden has been an amazing sailor all her life and has taught many women to sail. Here she is at the wheel of the Bowdoin, years after sailing to Greenland. Her review of my memoir, Sailing at the Edge of Disaster, brings a sailor's appreciation:

"I couldn’t put your well written book down. I devoured it in just 2 days, loving reading how you, at 16, grew into a much more assured young woman. The ship acting as your teacher and daring to confront your personal challenges is what sailing is all about. Learning to depend on your mates who then become forever family - interwoven dependence and independence and courage to go way beyond what we thought we could ever do or be. Bravo! A wonderful book! "
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#Toadhalleditions
#sailingattheedgeofdisaster #sailingmemoir

My mom has been sick for a month. A viral stuffy h

My mom has been sick for a month. A viral stuffy head, cough, and exhaustion made her miserable. Even as she got better, she was in a funk.

I knew I had to get her to the bridge to see the Rubber Ducky that has magically and anonymously appeared in Belfast harbor. I thought she could walk a little ways onto the bridge to see it.

But once she started walking, and got some fresh air, and saw the Ducky, there was no stopping her. With her cane and me holding her other hand, she took off. She said, "this was just what I needed, a kick in the butt to get me going."

I kept suggesting, maybe walk half way, or take a rest. She did stop at each lamp post,, to look at the bay, the silvery water at the horizon, the cormorants diving, the tide coming in with oak leaves and pine needles on the surface, the families and kids looking at the ducky, and then she was on her way again. And again. And again.

She made it all the way across the bridge and back! She was so happy. Later when I called to check in, she said I had such a long deep nap.

That ducky isn't named Greater Joy for nothing!

How I discovered my title. For nearly 45 years,

How I discovered my title.

For nearly 45 years, I simply referred to this story of my year at sea as The Ship Book. When I finally started writing it, all the files were named The Ship: Draft 1, 2, up to 12. But nearly every draft had a different name on the title page.

I brainstormed pages of possible names:

A Memoir of a Girl Who Saves Herself

A Memoir of a Girl’s Perilous Year

It didn’t feel like a Disaster: A memoir of a Teen’s Perilous Year at Sea

It wasn’t totally a Disaster:

Was it a Disaster? (Disaster seemed to be important word!)

A Beginners Guide to Disasters at Sea

A Lost Girl at Sea

I walked around my favorite bookstore, feeling like I was shoplifting titles, scribbling notes on what inspired me:

Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In (fabulous!)

My Brilliant Friend (I loved the ambiguity, who was the Brilliant friend?!)

The Education of ...

The Secret Life of …

The History of

The Map of …

But nothing clicked. I made more lists. But nothing was IT. I didn't have a title yet that had everything that was needed. Even as the book neared completion and I was starting to pitch the book to agents and publishers, the title still wasn’t settled.

That’s when I found Kristen Paulson-Nguyen, who’s gift is helping people find their titles. The Title Doctor! We worked together off and on for weeks, talking on the phone, writing, and exchanging words. We explored what was essential. (Was it a best friend story or a coming of age story?) We explored lists of words for all their rich delicious implications.

It was a gradual process, sifting, clarifying, discerning. We got closer on the title, but something still wasn’t right with the subtitle, until our last phone call. She added a word, daring, and that clinched it!! The title almost gave off sparks of Yes!, like setting the keystone in an arch. Then for dessert, my best friend from the ship, said it had to be “Young Woman's” and not a “Girl’s” Daring Year. And that felt like a sigh of relief, yes, of course.

The Title was finished.

Find us this Saturday, Oct.. 29, at the Boston Book Fair in the Title Doctor Booth!

Readers Reviews from MidCoast Maine: Karen Waldma

Readers Reviews from MidCoast Maine:

Karen Waldman:

Sailing at the Edge of Disaster is an incredible story told by a enormously talented storyteller! Wow what an adventure from the first page to the last. Elizabeth Garber not only takes us along on this harrowing journey, but offers us a viscerally intimate view of the poignancy and vulnerability of teenage years. I was hooked from beginning to end, and am left with the greatest respect and admiration for her ability to engage this reader so deeply in this wondrous life changing odyssey.

Deborah Shepherd:

Elizabeth Garber’s gritty, poignant and luminous new memoir, had me from the first words of the prologue: “I can’t”

I was right there with her, one hundred feet in the air, as the terrified seventeen-year-old Elizabeth tried to conquer the rigging of the four-masted ship that would be her home for the next year of her life, with the voice of her domineering father echoing in her brain: “You’ll never amount to anything.”

But what happens on this shipboard school for “troubled” youth—given the cast of characters: a disparate crew of diffident, inexperienced, and rebellious teens; some predatory adults; and a charming young leader who leads with charisma instead of experience and knowledge; the setting: a once magnificent vessel that has seen much, much better days; not to mention dangerous plot twists: a near-sinking and being held hostage by gun-wielding soldiers—is nothing short of a miracle.

The transformation of both the vessel—from wreck to shipshape—and the narrator—from insecure and timid teen to confident and courageous young woman—from “I can’t” to “I did”—makes for an unforgettable read.

Bayside’s Alice Meador:

Elizabeth, I could not put your book down! Much sleep was lost but there are no regrets. You are a survivor and so is your brother. Of course you write so vividly and poetically and you have a thrilling tale to tell. I found it to be one of the most revealing coming of age books. Raw at times but always speaking the truth out of the complexities of the teenage journey. Thank you so much for sharing your joys and pain of the life changing adventure.

Thanks to my generous readers!

Nautical themed review photo from the delightful M

Nautical themed review photo from the delightful Michelle Redo of the podcast Daring to Tell:True Stories by Readers who Lived Them. Here's her review:

"Maybe you’re a sucker for perilous sea stories, or books set on grand elegant sailing ships. Maybe you love coming of age memoirs or stories of transcending a difficult childhood. Maybe true life adventures float your boat, or extraordinary international incidents that have been lost and forgotten to the pages of history. Or maybe you just have a nostalgic place in your heart for growing up in the 1970’s.

For all of the above, I loved Elizabeth Garber’s Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year.
As someone who tends toward seasickness and backed down a diving board ladder rather than successfully complete Guppy Swim Class, I was immediately drawn to this young protagonist. Elizabeth and her younger brother are sent by their commandeering father to an experimental school on a ship for “troubled” teens. The young Garber may be troubled, but not in the usual ways. While she possesses a strong sense of self, she’s nonetheless filled with fears, insecurities and inhibitions, as well as a passion for recording her thoughts.

The regal private yacht for their “school”—built in the 1930’s for the richest woman in the world at the time —is stunning, and broken, and must be repaired before it can depart on their journey. The seven girls and forty-three boys who made up the student body have been carefully selected for the right balance of enthusiastic passionate kids to match another bevy of bad attitudes.

Rounding up this cluster of kids was a charismatic 25 year old who won’t sail with them. What could go wrong? Plenty. From some of Elizabeth’s recurring social missteps to a violent international standoff. However, what goes right is both gripping and endearing. Kindness in the midst of peril.

All of this had me clutching the arm of the couch I comfortably lounged on as I flipped one page after the next. The intimate and candid writing left me both grateful I’d never been in a gale force at sea, yet also a little saddened to never have been thrust into true physical peril. ..."

I must confess, I had a blast on my tv interview w

I did not love Damon Galgut’s Booker award winni

I did not love Damon Galgut’s Booker award winning novel The Promise, a brutal tragicomedy of South African history from 1985 to 2018 revealed through the lens of four funerals and the collapse of one Afrikaans family and farm. But the writing is a feat to experience: accomplishing a slip sliding, drifting style that succeeds in creating a narrative that is revealed by every character, animal (snakes, jackals, baboons) and landscape that that story careens over, like a runaway bus. Everyone has a voice beyond the initial family: dotty aunts and uncles step out of Dickens, grave diggers from Shakespeare, funeral home directors preparing bodies, carjacking murderers, Mutt and Jeff detectives, and of course the travels of a mother’s ghost. The narration proceeds in a continual present tense, jumps the rails from 3rd person to 1st, and then winks at the reader in 2nd person comments. Strangely enough, I wouldn’t have missed this bus ride from hell. It’s no accident that the epigraph is from Fellini.

I am so grateful for my bookgroup choosing books I wouldn't have read otherwise. I stayed up late, got up early to finish, made a page of notes of repeating themes and images,, and read alot of international reviews to prepare for our conversation today, when we'll sit outside on a foggy Maine day, to stay covid safe to dig into our discussion. A perfect education for a writer. Like putting on training shoes as I begin thinking about my next book, a novel.
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#damongalgut
#damongalgutthepromise
#damongalgutbookerprize
#thebookerprize
#bookgroup

Favorite places on the west coast of Cape Breton!

Favorite places on the west coast of Cape Breton! Red Shoe Pub in Mabou!! Closes Monday for the winter. The simplicity of Canadian Architecture. The Margaree River valley and exploring winding gravel roads into the hills and crossing one lane wooden bridges. Celtic Colour concerts. And sending cow photos home from the Mabou hills to my 1 year old grandson who loves cows.
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#celticcolours #redshoepubmabou #canadianarchitecture #margareeriver

Best kids pirate getaway ever, made by a friend's

Best kids pirate getaway ever, made by a friend's son and 7 & 9 year olds over several rainy spring days. It even weathered Hurricane Fiona.

Ever dream of fixing up a 170 year old Cape Breton

Ever dream of fixing up a 170 year old Cape Breton farmhouse build by Scots weavers and shipwrights on 10 acres over looking the Bras d'Or, or starting fresh? My friends have been coming for 70 years and time to pass it on.

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