Customer Reviews

A Pearl in the Storm: How I Found My Heart in the Middle of the Ocean

5 star:		(34)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A Pearl in the Storm is a fantastic read. With the prerequisite white knuckle moments of a good adventure book, it draws you in and keeps you there. Tori Murden McClure sweeps the reader along as she attempts to become the first woman to solo row the Atlantic Ocean. I found myself gripped with apprehension as the communication systems went out, bracing for the next big wave, and pondering, as the author does, about when she would need to call for help and abandon her quest.

However, to categorize this book strictly as an adventure book would be a mistake.

It is first and foremost a book about human nature and the internal battles we all fight in the course of our lives. Whether you are a scholar, an athlete, both (like Tori) or neither, this is a universal experience. Through the seemingly impossible goals the author sets for herself --- whether it is through her academic endeavors, career choice, or the row across the Atlantic --- she attempts to defeat these demons. She isn't always successful, in fact, her first attempt to row across the Atlantic ends in failure, and this defeat almost ends her battle. But that defeat ultimately leads Tori to understand that her demons are what, in fact, make her human. The human battle described within these pages is the facet of the book that I found so compelling. Tori's adventure appeals broadly--not just to super-athletes--but to all of us who have taken up, abandoned, revived, achieved and learned from our personal journeys.

Read this book for an inspiring story about one woman's quest to understand herself. You'll recognize yourself in Tori's human voice and take heart. She takes us on her adventure to be the first woman to successfully row across the Atlantic, and ultimately, on her quest for happiness.

from life. Not that they deserve a beating, it's just that they come into this world saying, "Bring it on." They don't sit on the edge of the universe murmuring, "I wonder what life holds? I'm not sure if I'm strong enough to face it." Instead they say, "I don't give a care if I'm strong enough, I'm jumping in and I'm going to make a difference." And when they get bruised, you won't hear them whine. As a matter of fact, they're just a wee bit proud of those contusions. It's not that they're looking for trouble, they're just trying to set their corner of the world straight.

While most of us are running for cover or dialing 911, they're running full throttle toward danger and giving the bottom feeders a piece of their mind and a fist to the mouth. They don't fight for the sake of fighting. They are the defenders of the those without voices. They know life isn't going to be good to the "weak", so they are going to do some equalizing by all means available to them.

Tori Murden McClure is one of these people. She is clear thinking and passionate. Her brother Lamar is the driving force behind her mission to set people and the system straight. She fought for him nearly every day of her young life. Every child with learning challenges should have a sister like Tori. She is a role model that all children can look up to. Not because of her rowing skill, but because she was unwilling to let her brother's bullies have the power. So many kids feel powerless and unequipped to break away from the crowd and defend the weak. Tori never felt that conflict.

If anyone can take a beating from the Atlantic during hurricane season and not lose their mind or their heart, it is Tori McClure. Her internal navigation system is true and her sanity is not swayed by uncontrollable circumstances. If she were a stockbroker in the depression, she would not be jumping out the window, she would be putting out a net, and setting the jumpers straight!

What can I say? I love this book, I love the people in her life, and I love Tori's spirit. I wouldn't be surprised if she and Amelia Earhart were related.

In the introduction, the author asks her uncle, "If I write a book about my explorations, should I write it as a comedy, a history, a tragedy, or a romance?" With this book, Tori Murden McLure succeeds wonderfully on all four counts -- and so much more. This book is indeed an inspiration for anybody who has ever had (or ever will have) difficult goals or obstacles in their lives. And she does it all with never a boring word. Now that I've finished reading this book, I know it's one that I'll read more than once.

"You don't want to go through life as the woman who almost rowed across the Atlantic." So Muhammad Ali advises Tori Murden when she is vacillating between attempting another try at rowing across the Atlantic after a soul and body-battering first attempt and failure.

Fortunately for us, Tori was not willing to concede defeat in her attempt. This book is a remarkable tale of adventure and self-testing, of pride and humility, of failure and winning. She proves that it is not how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up again that count. We all know this but few of us have the courage to act upon it.

Tori Murden is a special person. Her story relates many of the obstacles she had to overcome to reach the heights she has attained. It didn't seem as if she was bragging but was just being very factual about her life's journey. From a young age, she has acted as guardian of her older but mentally handicapped brother Lamar, she fought the neighborhood bullies, sometimes unsuccessfully, she overcame tremendous obstacles of being a highly intelligent but misplaced youth; she had guardian angels and helping hands along the way to be sure, but 95% of her victories were self-attained. She also has had a long history of giving back to her community wherever that might be, even to putting herself in danger and going where lesser souls might not, would not travel.

Not only has Tori rowed twice across the Atlantic (her first attempt was aborted only a few hundred miles from her goal), but she quickly glosses over the fact that she has trekked to the North Pole and was one of the first women to reach the South Pole on the overland route. Climb mountains, cross jungles, traverse the worst of inner-city neighborhoods. What an inspiration!

The adventures of Tori's first trip across the Atlantic, enduring the worst hurricane season in decades, will make your adrenaline pump. You will be holding your breath along with her. You will feel her every ache and pain as she is battered inside her small rowboat in fifty foot seas with lightning crashing and storms raging outside for days. You will admire her perseverance as she rows against the wind for fifteen hours only to lose half the distance at night when she sleeps, and then she gets up the next day to do it all over again. You will appreciate her keen intelligence as she draws upon the insights of her heroes, long dead presidents and poets, among others.

When she asked a favorite uncle if she should write a book about tragedy, history, comedy or romance, her uncle replied, "A romance...the greatest stories in life are about romance." In the end, Tori finds romance and her heart. She finds humility and humanity.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who is looking for a good adventure, who needs inspiration in your own journey, who is doing some soul searching, or who is looking for...romance.

You must read this! Tori Murden McClure has written a terrific memoir focused on her effort to become the the first woman to row (yes, I said row) across the Atlantic. Her description of her trip ranges from the mundane to the sublime to the terrifying (she had the misfortune to make her attempt in what would turn out to be one of the worst hurricane years on record). Her descriptions of encounters with whales, dolphins, sharks, and seabirds make one want to follow in her footsteps, but the difficulty and and peril of her journey provide more than a dose of reality. But the book is much more than an adventure tale, which is what elevates it to must-read status. Interspersed with tales of the grit and determination she showed on her trip is the story of her life, a woman fiercely protective of her developmentally disabled brother, athletically gifted and determined, striving for knowledge (a bachelor's degree from Smith College, a Masters in Divinity from Harvard, and a law degree from the University of Louisville), and most of all, looking for her place in the world.

"A Pearl in the Storm" is not the greatest story I have ever read, and it is not the best book I have ever read. However, it is a very good story and it is a good book; and even more important, it is completely entertaining and enjoyable to read from start to finish. The author has the talent (that many authors do not) of being able to paint pictures with words. She is so good at describing what is happening at any point during her voyage across the Atlantic that you might think, after you are done reading, that you had been watching a movie instead of reading a book.

I have read hundreds of books during my lifetime, including dozens of "adventure" books. What I most like about adventure books is not what the writer finally accomplished, but how they accomplished it--how they overcame any troubles to reach their goal. "A Pearl in the Storm" intertwines the author's past with her present to show us what led the author to make the attempt, and what problems she had to deal with whilst making that attempt. This book is not just concerned with rowing a boat across the ocean, however. And I would like to make further comments about that but doing so would be at the expense of exposing portions of the book and possibly ruining reading surprises for future readers, so I will not.

Obviously, when someone writes a book concerning themselves, they will make themselves out to be a decent person, but I felt at times this author was very full of herself. In fact, this reached the point of being very annoying at times. But in any case, I think as you turn the pages of this book, you will find yourself pulling for this woman and hoping she succeeds.

"A Pearl in the Storm" gives us not only adventure, but also humor and even some romance. Although, as a man, the romance part wasn't the best part of the book for me, even that part of the book was well written (and really, it was only a small part of the book). In fact, the only words I find that don't fit in well is the title of the book itself. "A Pearl in the Storm" title seems a bit forced and isn't a title that pulls itself out from the contents of the book. The title sounds more like a catchy name for a romance novel than a title for an adventure book that reflects both the author's battle with the physical storms in the ocean and her inner storms with her own emotions.

Anyway, moving beyond my criticism of the title (and the author's ego at times), here is the best thing about this book: there are few extraneous words. There is no skipping over paragraphs or sentences to get to the next "good part." The entire book is the good part. This is one of those books you will be sad to finish because it takes you on such an entertaining journey you don't want it to end.

To be very honest, when I had finished the first 30 pages or so I thought I was in for a looooooong read. The book is fairly technical at the beginning, particularly for someone totally unfamiliar with boats or the sport of rowing. Since I had agreed to review it for Amazon, I kept going and I am so glad I did ! By the time I as half way through it, I was staying up way to late to read since I just had to know what was coming next.

This book is part adventure story and part human development story. The author, Tori Murden McClure, chronicles her attempt to become the first woman to row across the Atlantic Ocean. For this arm-chair adventurer, her stories just took my breath away. I can't imagine attempting such a huge endeavor and just reading about her hardships along the way made me exhausted. Intertwined with the story of the crossing, there are flashbacks to her life which help put the need to attempt this in context for the reader. It's a voyage of self-discovery for the author that you better understand by the end of the book. The typical person would just think she is nuts, but after reading her words, I felt much better able to appreciate what drove her to do this. She grew up with a less than ideal childhood taking on the role of defending her mentally handicapped brother Lamar. The parents appear to be fairly clueless about what is happening to their children and left them to take care of themselves and each other.

The author is obviously exceptionally bright and driven (Smith College, Harvard Divinity school) but I was very impressed with her ability to come across as just being honest with her mental and athletic abilities. The lack of ego in someone so exceptional is amazing and inspiring. She is forthright about her faults and failings in a way that makes you care about her as a person by the end of the book.

Absolutely wonderful book to read if you like adventure and if you like seeing someone discover who they are. I would also recommend watching the book trailer on the product page to get a brief visual glimpse of what she endured.

Outstanding !

This is an excellent book about one women's journey accross an ocean and into her own self. On one level, the author describes the trials and tribulations of rowing accross the Atlantic alone. She describes the life threatening dangers of her journey and the reader becomes keenly aware of the courage and determination, not to mention the physical and mental fortitude, it takes to successfully complete such a challange.

Also, Tori Murden's adventure is also about her own personal transformation and soul searching while alone at sea. The flashbacks slowed the story down a little but they give the reader insight into who this person is that would take on such an amazing adventure.

I don't normally go for memoirs, but this book looked interesting, and it was enough to keep me hooked - impressive for an avid reader who's very choosy about her books.

In June 1998, Toni Murden has a seemingly impossible goal: to row across the Atlantic Ocean by herself in a 23-foot rowboat called the American Pearl. She knows that the journey will take several months. What she doesn't know is that she's going to be up against one of the worst hurricane seasons on record... or the internal demons that surface during her long, solitary journey. After getting caught in Hurricane Danielle, she is forced to give up the trip and return home. Feeling like a failure, she learns that the journey is actually just beginning.

The book starts out by literally throwing you right into the middle of the ocean with Toni on her trip. Flashbacks are interspersed with Toni's day-to-day experience on the Atlantic, so readers get an idea of why Toni would decide to do this. Her life hasn't been easy: growing up with a developmentally disabled brother, she often felt like it was her against the world as she tried to protect him. This early childhood challenge inspires her to keep rising up - she attends prestigious schools where she has to work twice as hard to keep up with the other students, she tries out for the Olympics, she travels to Antarctica. "Can't" is not a word in her vocabulary. But as she spends time reflecting on her life in the Atlantic, and then as she returns home and has to come to grips with being, in her mind, a failure, she learns a lot about herself and what drives her.

This isn't necessarily a book about man vs. nature or overcoming impossible odds (the rowing across the Atlantic). When Toni actually successfully completes her trip, it's sort of anticlimactic, as the majority of the book focuses on the first aborted attempt and her time at home afterward. What the book really is about is Toni's finding herself through the experience, and how her worldview has changed when she's caught in another storm her second time out.

As a random aside, my advance copy of this book actually has a different title on the inside: "I Had to Row Across the Ocean: A Woman's Solo Odyssey." The author says in her prologue that she viewed this experience as a romance, so I wonder why she chose such an unromantic title. "I Had to Row Across the Ocean" suggests to me that maybe she still has some of those old demons plaguing her. Since she took a long time to pen this memoir, it would be interesting to know what happened since her second trip and marriage to now, when this book is about to be released. I just wonder if she has another impossible adventure lined up.

Overall, a very interesting read and a good story on overcoming our internal fears. Toni suggests that the only limits to achieving that we have are those we place on ourselves - a great lesson to be learned at any age.

I found this book to be not exactly what I felt the description promised, focusing so very much on the author's journey across the ocean. For sure, it is an amazing feat to attempt, though I would certainly rather read about it than attempt it myself! What I found much more interesting were the brief glimpses she offers into the moments that shaped her into becoming what she is today. I have to admit that about halfway through I found them a bit distracting, with the way they are simply interjected willy-nilly, and they are often presented in a way that I would imagine truly reflects the author's personality, sort of no-nonsense, what-you-see-is-what-you-get attitude. Almost that she is not offering them as excuses or reasons for past experiences being driving forces, but simply this is my life, this is who I am and what makes me 'me'. I felt like there was so much focus on the initial trip and not enough of what happened after, as about two-thirds of the book is taken up with just that. Even though it is touted as in important part of the narrative, the time spent working with Ali is barely touched upon. It seems that it was an important part of her life, yet almost seems as if it is mentioned as a selling point to get people interested in the book. I also don't know that it was a love story in the sense that she meant for it to be. Clearly, it isn't all roses and sweet nothings, but finding love at the end doesn't necessarily make it a love story, particularly when there isn't much focus on it. All in all, I enjoyed this book and commend Mrs. McClure for have the strength to do all that she strived for.