Grayson

Аннотация

Grayson is Lynne Coxs first book since Swimming to Antarctica (RivetingSports Illustrated; Pitch-perfectOutside). In it she tells the story of a miraculous ocean encounter that happened to her when she was seventeen and in training for a big swim (she had already swum the English Channel, twice, and the Catalina Channel).It was the dark of early morning; Lynne was in 55-degree water as smooth as black ice, two hundred yards offshore, outside the wave break. She was swimming her last half-mile back to the pier before heading home for breakfast when she became aware that something was swimming with her. The ocean was charged with energy as if a squall was moving in; thousands of baby anchovy darted through the water like lit sparklers, trying to evade something larger. Whatever it was, it felt large enough to be a white shark coursing beneath her body.It wasnt a shark. It became clear that it was a baby gray whalefollowing alongside Lynne for a mile or so. Lynne had been swimming for more than an hour; she needed to get out of the water to rest, but she realized that if she did, the young calf would follow her onto shore and die from collapsed lungs.The baby whaleeighteen feet long!was migrating on a three-month trek to its feeding grounds in the Bering Sea, an eight-thousand-mile journey. It would have to be carried on its mothers back for much of that distance, and was dependent on its mothers milk for foodbaby whales drink up to fifty gallons of milk a day. If Lynne didnt find the mother whale, the baby would suffer from dehydration and starve to death.Something so enormousthe mother whale was fifty feet longsuddenly seemed very small in the vast Pacific Ocean. How could Lynne possibly find her?This is the storypart mystery, part magical taleof what happened . . .From the Hardcover edition.