TWENTY YEARS AT SEA

A memoir of one woman’s life and loves while working aboard a cruise ship.

Debut author Goor describes her life story as a cross between two memoirs: the fictional remembrance of Forrest Gump, who let life take him where it chose (as portrayed in Winston Groom’s 1986 novel), and a real one by Wayne W. Dyer, whose 2014 book I Can See Clearly Now gave Goor the confidence to follow her instincts. Her childhood dream, spurred by the TV show The Love Boat, was to work on a cruise ship, and at 32, a cruise line hired her as a guest relations officer. Like the aforementioned TV program, Goor’s book is heavy on shipboard romance. The author’s most intense and complex relationship began nine months after she boarded her first vessel, the SS Meridian, in 1995, which departed from Antigua. She began dating the handsome Greek apprentice engineer, Giannis. Romances at sea often fizzle when a cruise ends, she writes, but her love affair with Giannis continued long afterward. On breaks between cruises, she visited him in Greece, and she later managed to get assigned to some of his cruises. As their romance winds through the book, the author effectively keeps readers guessing as to whether it became a permanent arrangement. She leaves no doubt, however, that workaday life on a ship is far from romantic; there are no weekends off, and crew members work seven days a week for months on end. Still, she reveals how there were opportunities for adventures in ports worldwide, and these sections are one of the book’s main draws. She breezily relates seeing the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, Alaskan glaciers, and the Great Pyramids of Giza and tells of watching black bears fish for salmon. Readers may wish that Goor had included more of these travelogue-style moments. The last half of the book veers into spirituality and introspection, which she connects to her years on the water.

Light, fun reading about a life of ocean travel.