A 2,600-mile journey in a 52-foot sailboat from the Caribbean to the Azores archipelago near Portugal is the gripping true-life story of Crossing by journalist and playwright Glyn Vincent. In the spring of 2022, Vincent and a good friend set off from the island of Saint Martin aboard their chartered sailboat, Orion, despite learning that the six or more crew they had initially been promised was now down to just four, including their affable yet odd captain, Dimitri. While the Orion and its crew navigated squalls and their own internal frictions, Vincent moves from present to past in alternating chapters that chronicle his love affair with sailing and boats. "Going to sea is a kind of obsession," and for Vincent, this "irrational leap" to sail across the Atlantic with two strangers was a way to connect with his parents, whose own itinerant childhoods in Europe and the Middle East eventually led to the U.S.
More than just a chronicle of a daring boat adventure, Vincent's memoir is an extended meditation on his upbringing and his parents' rocky marriage. His mother was the actress Betsy von Furstenberg and his father, Guy Vincent, an inscrutable man of "unrealized identities, lies, delusion, and violence." As the Orion sails straight into a tropical storm nearing the Azores, Vincent provides a fitting climax to his riveting adventure-story-cum-family-memoir. A wistful soliloquy on family and the crossing of troubled seas, figuratively and literally, Crossing: A True Story lingers with readers long after making it to port. --Peggy Kurkowski, book reviewer in Denver