![Book cover for Young Woman and the Sea [Movie Tie-in]](https://images.bookhype.com/covers/34/91/969885c1-f319-48f0-9e93-a0c93d101943/9780063271685-50b082a409c879b9ae53d8.jpg)
The exhilarating true story of Trudy Ederle, the first woman to swim the English Channel, and inspire a “wave of confidence and emancipation” for women in sports (Parade).
By age twenty, as the Jazz Age was just beginning, Gertrude Ederle had swum to the top of her sport. She’d won Olympic gold and broken a dozen world records, many of them set by men. But one challenge remained: the English Channel. The treacherous twenty-mile crossing was her Everest. When Ederle’s first attempt was unsuccessful, the world seemed to nod its head in understanding: No woman could possibly accomplish such a thing.
In 1926, Ederle proved them wrong. Outfitted in a two-piece swimsuit considered scandalous in her time, she perfected a new stroke known as the American crawl, training relentlessly in her neighborhood Brooklyn pool. Her German immigrant parents cheered her, and her sister and fellow swimmer helped fashion leak-proof goggles for her next attempt. Ignoring her effortless stroke that surpassed her male peers, one reporter called her a “mermaid.” But when Ederle plunged again into the frigid Channel, she emerged “Trudy of America,” the most famous woman in the world.
Based on years of archival research to unearth Ederle’s memory from obscurity, Young Woman and the Sea brings to life the real Trudy Ederle, the challenges that came with her fame, and the historic mark her achievement made for all women athletes who followed.
- ISBN10 0063271680
- ISBN13 9780063271685
- Publish Date 13 April 2023
- Publish Status Forthcoming
- Publish Country US
- Publisher HarperCollins Publishers Inc
- Imprint HarperCollins
- Format Paperback
- Language English