The Sea Captain's Wife with author Tilar Mazzeo

Join the New York Times bestselling author Tilar J. Mazzeo for an in depth exploration of her latest book, The Sea Captain's Wife, the true story of the first female captain of a merchant ship and her treacherous navigation of Antarctica's deadly waters. Co-presented by Litquake, San Francisco's Literary Festival.

In 1856, at just nineteen years old, Mary Ann Patten led her crew through Drake's Passage as her husband, the former captain, lay deathly ill and the first mate agitated for mutiny. Set against the backdrop of the California Gold Rush and taking us to the brink of Antarctica, The Sea Captain's Wife finally gives Mary Ann Patten her due. Mazzeo draws on new archival research from nineteenth-century women’s maritime journals and on her own expedition to the Southern Ocean and Antarctica in search of Mary Ann’s route.

Thrilling, harrowing, and heroic, The Sea Captain's Wife is the story of one woman who, for love, would do what was necessary to survive.

"[U]ndeniably one of the greatest stories of a bygone era." - Wall Street Journal

About the Speaker

Dr. Tilar J. Mazzeo is the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and San Francisco Chronicle bestselling author of numerous award-winning works of narrative nonfiction, including history and biography titles. Formerly the Clara C. Piper Associate Professor of English at Colby College and Professeur Associée in the Department of World Literatures at the University of Montreal, Dr. Mazzeo left the academy in 2019 to focus fulltime on writing. A fifth-generation sailor and tenth-generation Mainer (where the Patten story begins), she lives today on Vancouver Island, British Columbia, where, with her husband, she captains a Vancouver 42 offshore sailboat.