A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck

Name: A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck
Author: Sophie Elmhirst
ISBN: 9780593854297

Sophie Elmhirst

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A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck

Sophie Elmhirst

awards won

score

A Marriage at Sea won the New York Times bestseller list and was named a Best Book of 2025 by NPR, Vogue, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, and others. Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He's a loner, awkward and obsessive; she's charismatic and ambitious. But they share a horror of wasting their lives. And they dream – as we all dream – of running away from it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away? Most of us begin and end with the daydream. But in June 1972, Maurice and Maralyn set sail. For nearly a year all went well, until deep in the Pacific, a breaching whale knocked a hole in their boat and it sank beneath the waves. What ensues is a jaw-dropping fight to survive in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn have to find not only ways to stay alive but ways to get along, as their inner demons emerge and their marriage is put to the greatest of tests. Although they could run away from the world, they can't run away from themselves. Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea pairs an adrenaline-fueled high seas adventure with a gutting love story that asks why we love difficult people, and who we become under the most extreme conditions imaginable.

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