{ "item_title" : "A Marriage at Sea", "item_author" : [" Sophie Elmhirst "], "item_description" : "THE RUNAWAY NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER & ONE OF BARACK OBAMA'S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2025A NEW YORK TIMES TOP 10 BOOK OF 2025ALSO NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2025 BY NPR, VOGUE, TIME MAGAZINE, THE NEW YORKER, AND MOREThis is nonfiction that reads like fiction - the best kind. Elmhirst's retelling is a triumph, second only to the seemingly impossible feat of Maurice and Maralyn themselves. You won't be able to put it down. - USA TodayRemarkable... I found myself, alternately, holding my breath as I read at top speed, wandering rooms in search of someone to read aloud to, and placing the book facedown, arrested by quiet statements that left me reeling with their depth. - The New York TimesSuch an emotionally vivid portrait of a couple in isolation that I was shocked it wasn't fiction. How could a writer get so deeply into the minds of two real people in such extraordinary circumstances? ... So brilliantly depicted. - ElleA beautiful meditation on endurance, codependence, and the power of love. A dazzling book. - Patrick Radden KeefeAn enthralling, engrossing story of survival and the resilience of the human spirit. --Bill BrysonAn instant New York Times bestseller, this is the electrifying true story of a young couple shipwrecked at sea: a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership stretched to its limits.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.", "item_img_path" : "https://covers1.booksamillion.com/covers/bam/0/59/385/428/0593854284_b.jpg", "price_data" : { "retail_price" : "28.00", "online_price" : "28.00", "our_price" : "28.00", "club_price" : "28.00", "savings_pct" : "0", "savings_amt" : "0.00", "club_savings_pct" : "0", "club_savings_amt" : "0.00", "discount_pct" : "10", "store_price" : "28.00" } }

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Since he was a child, Maurice Bailey dreamed of escape: from his strict Christian household and unsparing mother, from the stultifying English town of Derby, from his physical and social awkwardness. Maurice’s hobbies—tennis, rock climbing, sailing— “gave him a sense of freedom, of a life beyond the limits of his own.” In contrast, his wife, Maralyn Harrison, brimmed with curiosity and confidence, eager to explore the world and quick to take in the wisdom of Maurice, who was nine years older. 

“Love, when it works, can feel like such a terrifying fluke,” writes Sophie Elmhirst in A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck. At first, marriage was adventure enough. But as they settled into routines, they craved something more. “Suppose,” Maralyn said to Maurice, “that we sold our house, bought a yacht, and lived on board.” That’s exactly what they did.

Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean and well into their journey on the Auralyn (a portmanteau of the couple’s first names), they were jolted by a loud crack. They rushed to the deck and spent several minutes standing in awe of a breaching whale that hit their boat—several minutes during which their boat took on water. 

The Auralyn was doomed, but Maralyn and Maurice were not. A Marriage at Sea recounts the pair’s 1972 journey. Drawing from the couple’s own accounts, which were informed by diaries they kept aboard their ship and the dinghy on which they floated for 118 excruciating days after the Auralyn sank, Elmhirst stitches together a compelling narrative of two unusual people in the unlikeliest of circumstances.

The first third of the book is action-packed, as Elmhirst chronicles the couple’s relationship and trip-planning at a clip that rivals the couple’s more successful days at sea. As they marry and then begin sailing together, they balance each other in every new situation. The pace falters, though, after the Auralyn goes down, and further founders after the Baileys’ rescue. Readers may wish that Elmhirst delved more deeply into the couple’s psyches. That can be a limitation of reporting on people who are dead (Maralyn died in 2002, Maurice in 2018), but it means the couple remain at a distance from the reader.

Still, Elmhirst’s writing is lovely, often lyrical. Take a passage reflecting on the journey’s start: “Departure is always clarifying, but particularly so on a boat. One moment, you are bound to the land by a rope; the next you are not. You are attached to a nation and its people; then you loosen the tie.” A Marriage at Sea reveals the stunning journey and ordinary flaws of one couple’s marriage—a relationship that, despite its unusual setting, mirrors the challenges of so many others.