"Deep Waters is a survival story of the highest order, navigating the complex terrain of marriage, medical crisis, and a future reimagined. After the trauma of her husband’s stroke, Mathews returns to a basic truth: through love, we discover who we are, and who we hope to become." 

--CAROLINE VAN HEMERT, award-winning author of The Sun is a Compass

“We felt like we were there with Beth, sharing her emotions, anguish and struggles through the stroke, hospital stay, and recovery. We felt like part of the family as we read, gasped, cried and hoped for recovery and for peace in her heart.”

—TBD BOOK CLUB, Seattle, WA

“If books were birds, this one would be an arctic tern—powerful and graceful, beset by storms and learning to survive, and more, to thrive. The writing is feather-light yet strong.”

—KIM HEACOX, author of Jimmy Bluefeather

In Deep Waters, Beth's adventurous life as a marine biology professor and mother in Alaska is upended when her healthy husband is slammed by a rare type of stroke. His radical approach to recovery clashes with her instinct to keep him safe at home and sets them on a collision course as he insists on ambitious sailing expeditions with Beth and their young son in Alaska’s magnificent yet unforgiving waters. Deep Waters is a gripping, intimate story of relationship resilience, set against the backdrop of Alaska’s dramatic marine wilderness.

Beth Ann Mathews grew up in the Midwest. She earned her undergraduate degree at Purdue University and her master’s degree in marine biology from the University of California at Santa Cruz. As a professor at the University of Alaska Southeast, she taught courses in biology, behavioral ecology, and marine mammalogy and led research on harbor seals, Steller sea lions, and harbor porpoises. She has also studied humpback, gray, and sperm whales and—briefly—sleeper sharks, and led undergraduate research programs on board tall ships in the Gulf of Maine and from field camps in Hawaii and Alaska. She has published numerous scientific papers, and a chapter from Deep Waters placed second in the 2018 Redwood Writers Memoir Contest. Deep Waters is Mathews’s first book. She lives on Bainbridge Island, Washington.

Beth Ann Mathews photo courtesy of Star Dewar.