By Carol Newman Cronin
Published by Live Wire Press 282 pages paperback
Book Review: Game of Sails
Poised to qualify for the US Olympic Team in the singlehanded “Solo” class, Casey Morgan’s life take an unexpected turn when another sailor, Spencer Harding, capsizes on top of her just before the start of a race. While Spencer’s full-time job as a sailmaker precludes training and competing with anything like Casey’s intensity and fierce determination, he’s a talented designer who happens to be developing a fast new design for the Solo – exactly the kind of secret weapon Casey’s been looking for…
A sailor and writer since childhood, Carol Newman Cronin is an award-winning writer/editor who has also won several national and international sailing championships. A member of the US Sailing Team from 2001 to 2007, Carol was a member of the US Olympic Team in 2004, and she and teammates Liz Filter and Nancy Haberland won two races in the Yngling class at the Athens Olympics. She served as a member of the Olympic Sailing committee from 2005 to 2016, and competes internationally in a variety of events. In 2018, she and teammate Kim Couranz won the Women’s Snipe World Championship.
“I started writing what would eventually become Game of Sails way back in 1994, long before I dreamed of going to the Olympics,” says the author. “Trying to fulfill my childhood dream of becoming a published author (and following the ageold advice to ‘write what you know’), I started a novel about competitive sailing. As part of my research, I helped on the race committee for the 1996 Olympic Trials – never dreaming I would win the next Trials event I attended. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.”
Carol Newman Cronin works out of her home office in Jamestown, RI, where she and her husband spend as much time on the water as possible. “My best morning,” she says, “starts off with a sunrise standup paddleboard session that ideally includes ‘woolgathering.’” Game of Sails is Carol’s third book and she’s working on the fourth. Her first, Oliver’s Surprise: A Boy, a Schooner, and the Great Hurricane of 1938, was published in 2008. A sequel, Cape Cod Surprise, followed two years later. To learn more about Carol and read her excellent blog, Where Books Meet Boats, log onto carolnewmancronin.com. ■