All at Sea
A Memoir
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4.3 • 24 Ratings
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
All at Sea is a remarkable story of love and loss, of how one couple changed each other’s life, and of what a sudden death can do to the people who survive.
On a hot, still morning on a beautiful beach in Jamaica, Decca Aitkenhead’s life changed forever. Her four-year-old son was paddling peacefully at the water’s edge when a wave pulled him out to sea. Her partner, Tony, swam out and saved their son’s life—then drowned before her eyes.
When Decca and Tony first met, a decade earlier, she was a renowned Guardian journalist profiling leading politicians of the day; he was a dreadlocked criminal with a history of drug dealing and violence. No one thought the romance would last, but it did—until the tide swept Tony away, plunging Decca into the dark chasm of random tragedy.
Exploring race and redemption, privilege and prejudice, All at Sea is a breathtakingly honest, profound, and utterly unforgettable memoir.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
While on a relaxing family beach vacation in Jamaica, Guardian journalist Aitkenheadwatched helplessly as her husband, Tony, drowns after rescuing their four-year-old son. Her remarkable memoir recounts the emotional toll his death takes on her and her two sons. The narrative explores how the foggy lens of truth, through which she, as a journalist, previously viewed tragedy, can shatter when tragedy hits home. Aitkenhead and Tony made for an unlikely pair. She covered the political beat for the Guardian while he dealt drugs and smoked crack, with violence part of his life. Yet the couple fell in love and had two sons together, and Tony became a model husband and father. Aitkenhead probes her own psyche to explore the numerous incongruities in her life that surface during her relationship with Tony. She looks at the serious depression that arose in her family when her mother died. Aitkenhead's tightly written memoir looks beyond commonly held truths, taking readers deep into the morass of human emotion and leaving them gasping for air.
Customer Reviews
Beautiful
Gracefully written and purely tragic. If only life and death were so eloquent.