Andrew K. (kuligowskiandrewt) - , reviewed on 1/13/2013 + 569 more book reviews

You're swimming alone in cool water, paralleling the California coastline, BUT you're realizing you're not alone in the water. In another genre, this will be the first line of a book about some sort of monster - real creature or imagined. Here, the author describes her experience with a baby gray whale who has become separated from his mother.

The book is a short, entertaining read (or, on 3 CDs, less than a 3 hour listen). The author walks a fine line with anthromorphism - neither taking the poet's approach of unequivocably assigning the whale and other sea creatures human emotions, nor taking a scientists' absolute denial of them. Ms Cox does walk a fine line between paralleling the whale and swimmer's challenges with others that the reader may encounter during life - after thinking about it, I still cannot decide if these add a depth to the narrative or if they distract from the basic story. I suspect each reader will have a different opinion on this topic.

I've thought about acquiring this book for over a year; now that I've finished, I wonder "what took me so long?"

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