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UNMOORED HAS SAILED INTO BOOKSTORES EVERYWHERE!

“An explosively rendered family drama, a deeply honest coming of age story…”

Michael Zam, writer/co-creator, Feud: Bette and Joan

UNMOORED

Coming of Age in Troubled Waters

It’s the ‘60s in San Francisco. Peace, love, and rock’n’roll reign. Counterculture has arrived and the times, they are a-changing, but while the beat goes on, a sixteen-year-old girl thinks only of endless summers beyond the dark waters of Golden Gate Bridge. After spending a decade helping her father build their forty-foot sailboat, Heritage, she will leave behind everything she has known for the promise he’s made to her and her sisters and mother: that on this trip of a lifetime, he will be a better man and father. Heading out to sea on the night of their departure, she fears how ill-equipped they are for the enormity of what lies ahead. After all, her father has failed his celestial navigation course, her sisters can’t swim, and no one knows how to sail.

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  • "Unmoored is a saga with so many details, such passion, beauty, and horror, such specificity of action, that I thought I was there, aboard Heritage, for the whole, harrowing, wild ride."

    S.A. Younts, author, All the Words on Stage

  • "J.R. Roessl unflinchingly turns the traditional family sailing saga on its head. Months of hardship at sea don’t coalesce into emotional bonds. Instead, as a sixteen-year-old, the author faces down the truth that she must dig deep within herself to untether from a splintered family dream veering disastrously off course."

    Cynthia Barrett, author, Three Sheets to the Wind

  • "Just finished reading an advance reader copy of this wonderful, page-turner of a memoir. Roessl does a great job capturing the self-doubt of a young woman growing up in the early '70s - deftly navigating her domineering father and tolerating her sisters in the tight quarters of the family's boat, Heritage, which they sail from San Francisco to Trinidad. As someone growing up in the Midwest, it's hard to imagine such an adventure but Roessl easily transports the reader there with a descriptive, captivating writing style. Well done!"

    Daniel Hauser, author, The Graveyard Gang