Alan Hardwick Books

This is going to be a fun event. Thanks again to Sarah Beth, KayLee and Tyler at Wolf Hills Coffee and Megan at The Book Cellar for hosting!

Twenty years ago, eighty-year-old Sakaye Hatash*ta rattled up in an old pickup to our boat dealership and announced, despite having no sailing experience, he was going to buy a new boat and sail across the Pacific by himself because he promised his wife he would return her ashes to her family in Japan. Feeble, bent over at the waist and wearing a gardener's uniform, Hata, as he asked to be called, hardly looked like a new boat buyer. Two months later, Hata cast off the lines of the boat he named Miya into a raging storm, and many people told me I had sold the old man his coffin. I had no idea whether he would make it, but I knew his was going to be a fascinating story, and it was one I wanted to tell.

I wrote the first quarter of the book as a memoir and planned to write the rest of his tale as a narrative non-fiction―along the lines of A Perfect Storm. But, as I started writing, I started to see his adventure through his point of view instead of postulating that he "may have" done this or "could have" done that. Armed with his charts, chart table contents, lots of research, and interviews with his friends, family, and support volunteers, I wrote his story describing some of the day-to-day struggles a man his age and condition would face sailing halfway around the world. I fictionalized a few events and added some dialogue to illuminate his journey. It is a "based on true events" tale; as I say in my preface, "Here Be No Dragons," there is more truth than yarn.

Mr. Hatash*ta's story is compelling and inspiring. While writing sales and marketing reports for thirty years does not necessarily make me a writer, I was very fortunate to meet Mr. Hatash*ta and am pleased to present "In Miya's Wake" as a testament to his fortitude, and, if not sounding too dramatic, a victory of the human spirit. I hope you will give it a read. Thank you.

alanhardwickbooks.com

amazon.com/author/alanhardwickbooks

I am excited to announce my book, In Miya's Wake is now available on Amazon:
amazon.com/author/alanhardwickbooks