She had spreadsheets for everything except …
Nina Preuss’s debut novel, The Singular Voyage of a Woman and Her Chicken, follows a woman who planned every chapter of her life, until the plan runs out of pages. For twenty-six years, Nez and her husband, Gery, worked and saved toward one dream: retire early and sail the seven seas. Then, with that dream finally in hand, Nez faces an impossible choice: sell the catamaran the two of them spent years planning their voyage on, or learn to captain it across some of the world’s most challenging waters herself.
Nez had spent decades at the top of her field, conquering complexity with spreadsheets, checklists, and expertise she trusted completely. None of it had taught her to sail. She could barely handle their catamaran, Spud, on her own, and the ocean ahead was bigger than any problem she had ever managed her way through.
As Nez makes her way from the Caribbean, through Panama, and into the vast Pacific, every nautical mile reshapes her from passenger to captain. Along the way she finds an unconventional family in the cruising community: two ex-SEALs whose party boat became a hit YouTube channel, sun-weathered sailors in their seventies, on their third trip around the world, an enigmatic Russian with a gift for reading the stars, and a family of five whose labrador has better sea legs than most humans. Even her egg-laying hen proves that the smallest crew member can offer the largest comfort.
Then, deep in the Pacific, a distress call asks Nez to turn back toward danger with more than her own life in her hands. It is the moment that will finally answer the doubt she couldn’t shake: was she a real captain, or just a very organized impostor?
Drawn from three decades of the author’s own sailing, The Singular Voyage of a Woman and Her Chicken charts the course of a woman discovering that the most important journey isn’t measured in distance, but in who you become along the way.
If you loved the world travel and self-discovery of Eat Pray Love or the raw determination of Wild, Nez’s journey through tropical islands will feel like coming home.
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