The Great Lakes serve as the setting for a powerful story about the men and women who labour upon them. Sheree-Lee Olson’s protagonist, Kate, belying her contemporary suburban origins and current career as an art student, is equal to the challenge of life aboard the lakers. Her adventures on the lakes culminate in an unanticipated and shocking climax.
Sailor Girl is both coming-of-age tale and love poem to the natural world. Set on the cargo boats of Canada’s Great Lakes in the summer of 1981, it follows the literal and figurative journey of Kate McLeod, a rebellious photography student looking to earn money for school. Using tight, salty dialogue and gripping description, the book renders a sharp-edged portrait of life literally lived on the edges of society.
It is also a love story, in which a middle-class girl finds a deep connection with the unruly young men and toughminded women of the lakes. Life on the water is both brutally physical and socially restrictive, and Kate kicks against the rules, both written and unwritten. A female riff on such classics as Two Years Before the Mast and Malcolm Lowry’s Ultramarine, Sailor Girl is also a uniquely Canadian story, one that distills a vanishing part of our heritage.