Sophie Elmhirst is a prizewinning writer for the Guardian Long Read and The Economist's 1843 magazine, and a contributing editor at the Gentlewoman and Harper's Bazaar. In 2020 she won the British Press Award for Feature Writer of the Year; she has also won a Foreign Press Award and been longlisted for the Orwell Prize. She first came across the story of Maurice and Maralyn Bailey researching a piece on our desire to escape. This is her first book. She lives in London.
Electrifying . . . a tender portrait of two unconventional souls
blithely defying the conventions of their era and making a break
for freedom
*Guardian*
Extraordinary . . . Elmhirst is a terrific writer
*ELIZABETH DAY*
An extraordinary survival story… Elmhirst’s reconstruction of their
ordeal is riveting, told in illuminating detail
*Sunday Times*
Maurice and Maralyn somehow contrives to be both gripping and
elegiac. Sophie Elmhirst's graceful, confident prose is novelistic
in its pleasures and profoundly moving in its impact
*KALIANE BRADLEY, author of The Ministry of Time*
A compelling book about a shipwreck, but also as thoughtful a tale
about marriage, for better and worse, as you are likely to read
*Observer*
Thought-provoking…compelling…tender… An ideal gift for a friend or
family who likes incredible true stories of survival. But it’s also
a book about love and hubris. And in that sense, it’s a book for us
all.
*PANDORA SYKES*
An amazing tale of survival . . . reminds me how incredibly hard it
is to find love out there in the world
*New Statesman*
This dramatic, profound human story is so beautifully told in calm,
thoughtful, perfectly judged prose. I really could not put it
down
*NINA STIBBE, author of Love, Nina*
A gripping tale of maritime catastrophe but also of marriage
*Sunday Times*
A gripping story of survival at sea and a haunting account of the
yearning to escape . . . It hasn’t left my mind since I finished
it
*OLIVER BURKEMAN*
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