Sonnet: One Woman’s Voyage from Maryland to Greece
My memoir of challenge and discovery was published by North Point Press, the narrative-nonfiction imprint of Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Here’s the flap copy:
From a windswept dock on the Chesapeake Bay, Lydia Bird sets out alone on a 5,000-mile voyage across the Atlantic and through the Mediterranean in her 42-foot sailboat, Sonnet. A physically grueling journey involving stormy seas and sleepless nights, it demands not only sound nautical experience but quick wits, a level head, and a settled stomach.
Bird’s solitary odyssey becomes an emotionally complex and often painfully funny journey when she is joined, for portions of her passage, by three very different women: Monica, a friend from the past; Eileen, whose husband—like her own—is posted to the U.S. Embassy in Sofia; and the intense and headstrong biologist Skyli.
The waypoints of the voyage are vividly etched: the lush volcanic island of Faial, the struggling ex-Communist country of Bulgaria, Gibraltar, archaic Malta, and most powerfully southern Spain, home of the author’s expatriate parents, where she grapples with lifelong family conflicts and her father’s failing health.
A daughter’s role as an adult in her parents’ lives; a wife’s role in her husband’s world of diplomacy; the meaning of friendship—Lydia Bird explores her themes with fierce honesty, finding her place on the globe as she traces a tumultuous wake along its surface. Filled by turns with dramatic seascapes and unforgettable characters, Sonnet is a moving memoir by an accomplished sailor, and a luminous voyage of discovery.
Here’s what the reviewers had to say:
“Perhaps because wind and language are both such transporting—and fickle—elements, it’s not surprising that good sailors often make good writers ... Lydia Bird’s Sonnet suggests the haven provided by a boat of one’s own.”
—The New Yorker
“Bird plays the nautical lexicon as if it were a stringed instrument ... [A] fiercely female world with enough energy to generate its own tempestuous weather system … Five thousand stormy miles, and worth most every minute of it, for Bird and for her readers.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The author, a California journalist, describes the weather at sea, her visit to family and friends abroad and her reunion with her diplomat husband in Greece … These frank entries portray a sensitive and observant woman not afraid to reveal herself.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Two stories emerge. One is a dazzling technical account of the complex judgments involved in sailing; the other is a reflection on the intricacies of loneliness, longing, and independence … ”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“As a reader you begin to see where Bird’s intense need for solitude and her hungry drive for success (both essential in solo sailing) come from … ”
—Newsday
“The tale of her voyage is engrossing ... Bird can sketch an immense seascape with a few strokes ... ”
—Smithsonian
“Perhaps because wind and language are both such transporting—and fickle—elements, it’s not surprising that good sailors often make good writers ... Lydia Bird’s Sonnet suggests the haven provided by a boat of one’s own.”
—The New Yorker
“Bird plays the nautical lexicon as if it were a stringed instrument ... [A] fiercely female world with enough energy to generate its own tempestuous weather system … Five thousand stormy miles, and worth most every minute of it, for Bird and for her readers.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The author, a California journalist, describes the weather at sea, her visit to family and friends abroad and her reunion with her diplomat husband in Greece … These frank entries portray a sensitive and observant woman not afraid to reveal herself.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Two stories emerge. One is a dazzling technical account of the complex judgments involved in sailing; the other is a reflection on the intricacies of loneliness, longing, and independence … ”
—The Christian Science Monitor
“As a reader you begin to see where Bird’s intense need for solitude and her hungry drive for success (both essential in solo sailing) come from … ”
—Newsday
“The tale of her voyage is engrossing ... Bird can sketch an immense seascape with a few strokes ... ”
—Smithsonian