Grayson
Grayson is the true story of a single day when Lynne Cox — a champion swimmer — was completing her usual pre-dawn swim along Seal Beach, California. When she realized that something very large was swimming behind her, her first terrified thought was that it was a shark. But she soon understood that the creature in her slipstream was not a threat, but a baby gray whale that had become separated from its mother and was following the first thing it saw. Cox knew she couldn't end her morning workout as planned, as the baby whale might follow her ashore and die in the shallow water. So she undertook a harrowing feat; she swam out to sea until she found the whale's mother.
Quote:
"They were stunning swimmers: Graceful, powerful, explosive, they dolphined through the water with complete efficiency. And they were so agile. In a second they could cut sharply left or right with only the slightest shift in their body positions and a series of quick flicks with their flukes and fins. Like cyclists, they drafted off one another [...] They were chattering in excited high pitches, and it sounded like they were laughing with glee. Their laughs came all the way up from their tails."
Author:
Lynne Cox is a long-distance swimmer, author, and speaker. She was the first person to swim the Straits of Magellan in Chile, as well as the first to complete a swim around South Africa's Cape of Good Hope. Her other books are Swimming in Antarctica and South with the Sun.
Published: 2006
Length: 146 pages
Set in: Seal Beach, California, U.S. and Pacific Ocean