To the Edge of the World

One woman. One ship. One astonishing true story.
 
Summer 1856. Nineteen-year-old Mary Ann Patten and her husband, Joshua, are young and ambitious. Both from New England seafaring families, they have already completed their first voyage around the world with Joshua as captain. Their dream of building a home and a family is almost within reach, but the price is one last dangerous transit - a race to deliver supplies to the other side of the country. And there is no alternative but to sail all the way around. 
 
Yet as their ship leaves New York, navigating towards the jagged coastline of South America, Joshua falls ill, confined to his bunk and delirious. The treacherous first mate is imprisoned in the brig for insubordination, and with no obvious option for a new captain, Mary Ann steps into the breach. Within days she has put down a mutiny and must now attempt to steer this 216' clipper ship laden with the modern equivalent of $11 million of cargo through Drake's Passage and around Cape Horn - the most treacherous waters in the world. 
 
To the Edge of the World is the true story of one woman who, when faced with impossible odds, would do all that was necessary to survive.
 
'What a breathtaking journey! The perilous ship race, the treacherous weather, a mutinous uprising, the life-threatening illness of the captain, and most of all, the heroic efforts of his wife, Mary Ann Patten... A spellbinding triumph' Marie Benedict, author of Queens of Crime
 
'An epic tale of courage, fortitude, and grit' Siddharth Kara, author of Cobalt Red and The Zorg

Dr. Tilar J. Mazzeo is The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle bestselling author of numerous award-winning works of narrative nonfiction, including Widow Clicquot - now a major Hollywood film. Formerly the Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College and Professeure Associée in the Department of World Literatures at the University of Montreal, Dr. Mazzeo left the academy in 2019 to focus full-time on writing. A fifth- generation sailor and tenth- generation Mainer (where the Patten story begins), she lives today on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where, with her husband, she captains a Vancouver 42 offshore sailboat.