The Motion of the Ocean: 1 Small Boat, 2 Average Lovers, and a Woman's Search for the Meaning of Wife »

Janna Cawrse Esarey was a 2008 Jack Straw Writing Fellow. Her work appears in travel anthologies and sailing magazines, including Sail and Cruising World. She also writes ?Happily Even After,? a relationship blog for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Janna lives in Seattle overlooking her friend and nemesis, the sailboat Dragonfly. Visit her at www.byjanna.com.

Choosing a mate is like picking house paint from one of those tiny color squares: You never know how it will look across a large expanse, or how it will change in different light.

Meet Janna and Graeme. After a decade-long tango (together, apart, together, apart), they're back in love — but the stress of nine-to-five is seriously hampering their happiness. So they quit their jobs, tie the knot, and untie the lines on a beat-up old sailboat for a most unusual honeymoon: a two-year voyage across the Pacific. But passage from first date to first mate is anything but smooth sailing. From the rugged Pacific Northwest coast to the blue lagoons of Polynesia to bustling Asian ports, Janna and Graeme find themselves at the mercy of poachers, under the spell of crossdressers, and under the gun of a less-than-sober tattooist. And they encounter do-or-die moments that threaten their safety, their sanity, and their marriage.

Join Janna and Graeme's 17,000-mile journey and their quest to resolve the uncertainties so many couples face: How do you know if you've really found the One? How do you balance duty to others while preserving space for yourself? And, when the waters get rough, do you jump ship, or do you learn to navigate the world...together?

Kirkus Reviews

Travel and relationship memoir from Seattle Post-Intelligencer blogger Esarey. After listening to Crosby, Stills & Nash's "Southern Cross" as a teenager, Esarey fell in love with the sea-but not the "literal, wet . . . get-a-degree-in-marine-biology sea . . . the lyrical sea . . . the transformative sea," she writes. "To the extent that women-girls have pickup lines, `I'm going to sail around the world someday' became mine. Boys eat that shit up." As did Graeme, the college sweetheart she eventually married and convinced to accompany her on her ambitious voyage. Onboard the Dragonfly a fight presented the perfect opportunity to explore the ten hard years that separated the couple's first meeting and this voyage, their honeymoon cruise. As their story unfolds chronologically in a series of small events, the author reflects on their time apart and ultimate reunion. But she glosses over many details, including what Graeme did for a living, and her tendency to substitute "blah blah blah" over dialogue, while occasionally humorous, may cause readers to question the focus of her attention. "The Green Box of Love" makes regular reference to the metaphoric significance of a gift box she's brought on the journey, but the author never reveals the container's actual contents. Throughout, the big question looms-can this couple make it? Fortunately, two years of cruising around the world offered a wealth of intriguing experiences, and Esarey ably brings to life remote isles and customs-particularly those in the South Pacific-most readers will never see. Her ruminations on these experiences, however, are mostly banal. Describing a beauty pageant for transgendered women in Samoa, she writes, "clappingwildly for those ballsy women carved out more space in my brain for words like beautiful and woman and normal."An uneven journey across the chartered waters of a romantic relationship.