Roz Savage

A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean
$25.99
I ordered this book after hearing the author interviewed on NPR. She was great on the radio, but it just didn't translate into the book. The writing was somewhat choppy and the romance angle seemed to be a forced and somewhat unnecessary component to the overall story. McClure is obviously an interesting and brave woman, but the book just felt flat and rushed.

Little Lady One Man Big Ocean: Rowing the Atlantic
$43.95
The story of two non-rowers who took on the challenge of rowing a tiny boat in the tans-Atlantic race.

Rowing the Atlantic: Lessons Learned on the Open Ocean
$24.00
Rowing across the Atlantic is one seriously impressive feat. Doing so alone, all the more so. However, I am reviewing the book and not the task, and I found the book lacking. Maybe there's something about books about Herculean tasks that just doesn't do it for me. I found The Man Who Swam the Amazon: 3,274 Miles on the World's Deadliest River similarly flat. Maybe it's the fact that the adventure here seemed to lack moments of high drama. For instance, if you were expecting pages of encounters with oceanic wildlife, you will be disappointed; there are only a few. (By comparison, I loved Grayson, whose author, Lynne Cox, blurbed this book and which is all rather high drama as the author finds herself swimming with a whale.)

In "Rowing the Atlantic," Roz Savage recounts her transition from a corporate job to open-ocean rowing and then her journey across the Atlantic. In between the bits about the ocean, she liberally sprinkles her biography, including the marriage from which she strayed, the moment when she decided to cross the Atlantic, and enough so that we have a good sense of who she was before the trek. The writing is generally competent, but ultimately, the story just seemed too prosaic, this despite the amazing task. I certainly commend Ms. Savage on her accomplishment, but I can't recommend the book especially highly, at least based on my subjective reading.