A Marriage at Sea

Taut, propulsive, and dazzling, A Marriage at Sea: A True Story of Love, Obsession, and Shipwreck by Sophie Elmhirst combines an adrenaline-fueled high-seas adventure with a poignant love story. The book examines our fascination with challenging individuals and how we grow under extreme conditions. The book was one of Barack Obama’s favorite reads of 2025. Additionally, it has been featured in The New York Times’ Top 10 Books of 2025 and has received accolades as a Best Book of 2025 from NPR, Vogue, Time Magazine, and The New Yorker.

Maurice and Maralyn make an odd couple. He is a loner—awkward and obsessive—while she is charismatic and ambitious. Despite their differences, they share a dread of wasting their lives and, like many of us, dream of escaping it all. What if they quit their jobs, sold their house, bought a boat, and sailed away?

While most of us only daydream about such adventures, in June 1972, Maurice and Maralyn actually set sail. For nearly a year, everything went well until a breaching whale struck their boat, sinking it in the deep Pacific Ocean.

What follows is a jaw-dropping fight for survival in the wild ocean, with little hope of rescue. Alone together for months in a tiny rubber raft, starving and exhausted, Maurice and Maralyn must find ways to stay alive while also coping with each other as their inner demons emerge. Their marriage is put to the ultimate test as they realize that, although they can run away from the world, they cannot escape themselves. A Marriage at Sea is a mind-blowing tale of obsession, survival, and partnership.

Sophie Elmhirst is an award-winning journalist who writes regularly for The Guardian Long Read and The Economist; her work has also appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Harper’s Bazaar, among other places. She’s the winner of the British Press Award for Feature Writer of the Year and a Foreign Press Award. She lives in London and is the author of A Marriage at Sea.

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