Two years after her historic 110-mile swim from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida, super endurance swimmer Diana Nyad is publishing a memoir, Find A Way.
At the time of the swim, Nyad was 64 years old. She finished in just under 53 hours and became the first woman to complete the superhuman feat without a shark cage.
In the book, Nyad covers the 2013 swim along with her unsuccessful Cuba to Florida attempts in 1978, 2011, and 2012, which were waylaid by complications such as storms, asthma attacks, and jellyfish stings. She also speaks about the swim that first rocketed her into the national news: a 1975 world record-breaking swim around NYC’s island of Manhattan (28 miles in 7 hours and 57 minutes). Throughout she gives advice on the mental techniques that help her through her grueling super-swims, and she even writes about her childhood trauma and its effect on her as an athlete.
This is Nyad’s fourth book; her list includes Other Shores (a 1978 memoir on her life and distance swimming), the 1981 Basic Training for Women, and Boss of Me: The Keyshawn Johnson Story, a biography of an NFL wide-receiver.
Find a Way went on sale today.