Months ago I heard Suzanne Heywood interviewed on CBC Radio and her story captured my imagination. At seven, her father pulled her and her brother out of school in England and they set sail following Cook’s third voyage. Suzanne’s mother is seasick off the bat, they get hit by another boat before leaving the country, and their intermittent luck comes and goes from there.
What was promised as a year adventure, maybe 3 years, becomes 10. Suzanne does not have a romantic view of this adventure. Her younger brother John adapts more easily to no school. He learns the ropes (literally) and makes friends as needed. John is less than a year younger, but it’s the 70s and he’s a boy. Suzanne gets stuck in the galley making meals with her mother and running domestic errands (i.e., get mommy a G&T).
Imagine being away for 10 years of schooling. The lack of friends, the wayward lifestyle, the survival instincts needed to deal with storms, rollicking waves, life on a boat, customs and immigration—it’s crippling for Suzanne and also the catalyst for her plan to escape. It not all horrendous. There are some amazing moments, and she does live an incredible life at sea. But I’m amazed that young Suzanne was driven enough to figure out correspondence courses, when her family mostly couldn’t be bothered by whether the kids could do more than read, write and do a bit of math. Suzanne not only graduated, she graduated with top marks and got into Oxford University.
Wavewalker is a stunning autobiography about living someone else’s dream.