In this gorgeous memoir, we are taken back to the summer of 1979 when the author, then 19, decides to forgo a summer job at her local suburban Roy Rogers and instead signs on to be a “workaway” on a German container ship. She boards the enormous ship with her fair share of trepidation—she doesn’t speak German, has no knowledge of the daily routine at sea, and has no idea what type of work she will be asked to do. As the long days wear on, she slowly becomes more comfortable with life at sea and finds solace in the sweetness of the European pastries served at the afternoon smoke breaks, watching the sea from the portal in her cabin, and listening to Genesis and Peter Gabriel on her eight-track player.
Both the language barrier and her inexperience make it difficult for her to make friends, but over the weeks, she manages to connect with several of her shipmates. I found the cast of characters on the ship—Herr Most, Alois, Claudia—to be fascinating and well-drawn. Though none of these connections last beyond disembarkation, each one of them teaches her something about herself and about the kind of person she wants to be.
This memoir is both a coming of age and a fish out of water story, and it works well on both of these levels. Lowman’s writing is nothing short of exquisite. Her sentences flow beautifully, and her descriptions are evocative and place me right there on the deck or in the galley beside her. She uses similes and metaphors liberally, something I sometimes find distracting and unnecessary, but in her capable hands, these comparisons add to the richness of the narrative.
“They lifted out of the spray at rhythmic intervals, like choreographed lords-a-leaping, thin fin membranes spread open eighteen inches wide like wings. They alternated jumping out, gliding and diving back in with their schoolmates, so the surface shone and quivered with their ballet. Airborne for what seemed like an extraordinarily long time—thirty to forty seconds—their dance welcomed us to this side and sent us on our way.”
The story is broken up into sections titled for the segments of the trip—embarkation, at sea, homeward bound, complete with latitude and longitude designations. I found this to be a clever way of breaking up the memoir and of marking the narrator’s growth as the ship continues its transpacific crossing. During the seemingly eternal 10-week journey to Australia and back, Lowman considers buying a plane ticket home, but she ultimately decides that she needs to step off the ship on the dock in New York, that completing the sailing as planned will prove to herself that she is stronger, more capable, and more independent than she ever imagined.
Lowman will speak about her memoir at Westport’s Barnes and Noble on Saturday, November 10 at 2 p.m.
Barnes and Noble is located at 1076 Post Rd E in Westport, Conn.