Water's Edge: Women Who Push the Limits in Rowing, Kayaking and Canoeing

by Linda Lewis

Book Overview

Profiles ten women involved in water sports from the first pioneers to today's Olympic stars, including Ernestine Bayer, Kris Karlson, and Valerie Fons. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1878067184
• ISBN13: 9781878067180
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Seal Press (CA)
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

What a gem. So sorry to see it end.

Books about rowing are rare enough. Books about women rowing or paddling are even rarer. Along with "The Red Rose Crew," "Water's Edge" is a lovely addition to this tiny category. In an unusual and delightful "double funnel" structure, the book begins with the most structured form of rowing, crew, then narrows to individual sports such as racing singles and single kayaking and canoeing, and then widens again to double canoeing and kayaking and finally ends with the "Back River Seven," a group of seven women who canoed one of the most remote rivers in North America, the Back River in the Canadian Arctic. Interestingly, a second layer of structure governs the book, moving from the most controlled settings, regattas, to the wildest, represented by two chapers, one on the Back River Seven and another on Valerie Fons who, with her husband, paddled over 21,000 miles, almost entirely by river, from Canada's Northwest Territories to Cape Horn, at the southern tip of South America. If it seems I'm overly stressing the structure of the book, it's because it's part of what makes the book so rewarding and fulfilling to read. It covers a wide range of methods of moving boats by hand, and the structure gives the book a lovely cohesiveness and unity. The stories of the women themselves, of course, are stirring and inspiring. In most cases, these are women who have had to fight for recognition in their sports or, in the case of Ernestine Bayer (gnerally acknowledged as the matriarch of U.S. women's rowing) to have a sport at all. "Water's Edge" really should be read in concert with "The Red Rose Crew." As it happens, I read "The Red Rose Crew" first, and it feels as if that's the proper order. In any case, they make excellent companions. They both describe the efforts of women to reach the heights of excellence in their sports and, along the way, bring to vivid life feats of courage, endurance, and sheer, gut-wrenching tenacity at which we can only marvel. One of the women, for example, explains that she doesn't really like racing because she doesn't like the taste of blood in her mouth afterwards. But perhaps the most epigrammatic quote of all is Valerie Fons's description of what she learned on her epic pole-to-pole canoe trip: "Fear is a door, not a wall. Once you choose courage, you begin practicing it. Then it's all the easier to choose courage again. Overcoming fear is the thing I know about. Some songs you can sing because that's where your voice fits."