Swimming to Antarctica

December 1, 2003
Cox, one of the world's leading long-distance swimmers, has been a risk-taker ever since she was nine and chose the freezing water of a New Hampshire pool in a storm over getting out and doing calisthenics. After her family moved to California so she and her siblings could train as speed swimmers, she discovered long-distance ocean swimming. Her first open-water event, a team race across the Catalina Channel, convinced her to train for the English Channel. At 15, she broke the Channel record, and decided she needed a new goal. Up to this point, Cox's story reads like a fairy tale of hard work, careful planning and good support, crowned with success. It isn't until she competes in the Nile River swim that the tale turns ugly—she's swimming in raw sewage and chemical waste, fending off the dead rats and broken glass, so sick with dysentery she lands in the hospital. Undeterred, she plans more ambitious swims—around the shark-infested Cape of Good Hope, across Alaska's Glacier Bay—to prepare for her big dream, a swim from Alaska to the Soviet Union across the Bering Strait. While offering herself to researchers studying the effects of cold on the human body, her political goals are even larger: to bring countries and peoples together, using swimming "to establish bridges between borders." Cox ends her story with her swim to Antarctica, where she finishes the first Antarctic mile in 32-degree water in 25 minutes. Even though readers know she survived to tell the tale, it's a thrilling, awesome and well-written story. (Jan.)

Forecast:
Knopf plans lots of media for this inspirational book, including a nine-city author tour, a profile in
Biography magazine, an appearance on NPR, ads in
USA Today and features in women's, sports and travel magazines.

December 1, 2003
Cox shares with her readers a truly amazing life. She was a gifted swimmer from her childhood, and it quickly became apparent that her strength was in long-distance swimming rather than the comparatively short races of Olympic competition. After setting a record for swimming the English Channel when she was only 15, she longed to make a difference in the world with her skill and realized that swimming from shore to shore symbolically brought the two together. She immediately set her sights on swimming the Bering Strait between Alaska and the then-Soviet Union. Much of the book details her 12-year odyssey to get permission for this swim, but she also eloquently writes of her other record-setting swims, including the Strait of Magellan and around the Cape of Good Hope, where she was nearly attacked by a shark. And, of course, there is her frigid 1.06-mile swim to Antarctica in 32-degree water. The writing is workmanlike at best, but Cox's sincerity and her love for the sport shine through, making this a good addition to all sports collections. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 9/1/03.]-Deirdre Bray Root, Middletown P.L., OH

Copyright 2003 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2003
Cox was a girl when she discovered the joys of swimming in open water. She was good at it, too, blessed with the perfect physique for long, cold swims. She dreamed of crossing the English Channel and, at age 15, set a new record doing just that. More stunning swims followed: New Zealand's tide-whipped Cook Strait, Chile's stormy Strait of Magellan, and South Africa's shark-swarmed Cape of Good Hope. She battled stonewalling Soviets for a decade before gaining permission for a goodwill swim from the U.S. to the USSR in the frigid Bering Strait. Cox is a pleasure. In an era when so many athletes are motivated by greed and ego, she seems utterly genuine. She studies her body like a scientist but writes about water with a winning, simple poeticism. Many passages are grip-the-page exciting, whether she's dodging Antarctic icebergs or Nile River sewage. Her wide-eyed idealism may seem a little corny at first, but by the end we're rooting for her, wondering if brave and mostly solitary acts (huge support crews are necessary) don't bring us together after all.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)