Book Launch w/ Susan Cole, Author of Holding Fast

8123 Oak St,New Orleans LA 70118

19 October, 2021

Description

Join us on Tuesday, October 19th at 6 pm to celebrate the launch of Holding Fast: A Memoir of Sailing, Love and Loss by Susan Cole! Join us on Tuesday, October 19th from 6 - 7:30 pm to celebrate the launch of Susan Cole's memoir, Holding Fast: A Memoir of Sailing, Love and Loss. There will be a reading from the book, followed by a Q&A with the author and a signing. Tickets are required. Attendees must be properly masked and provide proof of vaccination at the door. Many people dream of escaping reality and sailing away to remote islands, but few actually go. Susan’s husband, John, dreamed of a sailing life. Susan dreamed of settling down. They began with a compromise, living on a romantic ferryboat in Long Island Sound, both still working on land. John wore jeans and topsiders to his high-pressure New York City advertising job while his colleagues wore suits. When their daughter, Kate, was seven, they decided to leave their quaint Connecticut farmhouse behind and sail to the Caribbean. "Kate told her class the next day that she was sailing to the Caribbean and snorkeling, and she wasn’t going to school anymore…I wish it had been that simple for me. I did not want to go. John would tease me and say, ‘I’ll have to drag you out kicking and screaming, clinging to the garden.’ I imagined myself red-faced and shrieking, my fingers black with dirt, while John yanked my legs and Kate stared open-mouthed." They were terrified to sail in the dark. Susan questioned whether they should turn back as the sailing became scarier and in remote places, their lively daughter became quieter. Toward the end, though, she took charge during a deadly hurricane in Guatemala when John was away and realized her inner strength. Now, years later, John has passed away and her spirit of adventure lives on. Susan Cole has lived on or around sailboats for more than thirty years. In between sails, she earned a B.A. at Barnard College, an M.A. at Columbia University, and for many years, ran a successful market research firm in New York. Her essays have appeared in literary journals and sailing magazines. Susan was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Her unexpected life on the water began when blond, blue-eyed, irreverent John burst into her life in her twenties and talked her into living on a 1903 48-foot ferryboat in Long Island Sound. It sank. Their next home was a leaky 50-foot, 50-ton 1920s Norwegian ketch that they named Phaedrus, after a character in a book they were reading. Phaedrus was the main character’s alter ego on a quest to find a higher quality of life, a quest that eventually drove him insane. Ten years of leaky decks pushed them to buy a house in Connecticut. A three-year voyage to the Caribbean profoundly changed their lives. Susan now lives in New Orleans with her cat Ollie, and Kate has become a worldwide traveler who lives in Vancouver, Washington, with her husband and baby boy.