A European Odyssey: How a boxer's daughter found grace

By Bailey Alexander and Bailey Alexander

In the wake of a shattering family secret-that she is a love child from a long-hidden affair-Bailey Alexander's seemingly perfect life unravels. Her thriving Seattle consulting business, new marriage, and idyllic houseboat existence are upended further by her brother's death from brain cancer and the raw shock of 9/11. At a crossroads of grief and identity, Bailey hears a call she can't ignore: sell everything, cross the Atlantic by sailboat, and reinvent herself in Europe.

With her multilingual husband Francis-eager to chase his own offshore dreams-they embark on a daring voyage from Halifax to Gibraltar, braving fierce storms, a clashing captain, and an unexpected mid-ocean message from her high school boyfriend: he's found their daughter, given up for adoption eighteen years earlier. Bailey refuses to reopen old wounds, choosing instead to forge ahead into an uncertain future.

What follows is a decades-long odyssey across Rome, Paris, Malta, Venice, Amsterdam, Prague, and the rolling hills of Piemonte. Through cultural immersion, devastating loss including her beloved mother, financial ruin from a failed startup, and the quiet magic of live-aboard simplicity-cycling for groceries, tending gardens, savoring sunsets-Bailey sheds materialism and discovers a purposeful, spiritual life rooted in her adopted homeland.

A raw, vivid memoir of adventure, heartbreak, and hard-won reinvention, this is the story of one woman who sails away from everything she knows to find the home she never expected.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0984737480
• ISBN13: 9780984737482
• Release Date: June 2020
• Publisher: R. R. Bowker
• Length: 246 Pages
• Weight: 0.81 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"