This captivating bestseller tells the true story of a miraculous encounter between a teenage girl and a baby whale off the coast of California. It was the dark of early morning; Lynne was swimming her last half mile back to the pier after a long workout when she became aware that something was swimming with her. The ocean was charged with energy as if a squall was moving in; whatever it was felt large enough to be a white shark coursing beneath her body.
In fact, it was a baby gray whale following alongside her. Lynne quickly realized that if she swam back to the pier, the young calf would follow her to shore and die from collapsed lungs. But if Lynne didn’t find the mother whale, the baby would suffer from dehydration and starve to death.
Something so enormous—the mother whale would be at least fifty feet long—suddenly seemed very small in the vast Pacific Ocean. How could Lynne possibly find her?
This is the story—part mystery, part magical tale—of what happened.
© Ann Chatillon
Lynne Cox has set records all over the world for open-water swimming. She was named a Los Angeles Times Woman of the Year, inducted into the International Swimming Hall of Fame, and honored with a lifetime achievement award from the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is the author of Swimming to Antarctica, which won an Alex Award. She lives in Los Alamitos, California.
