Laura Waterman

Laura Waterman grew up in New Jersey. Her father, Emily Dickinson scholar, Thomas H. Johnson, taught at the Lawrenceville School. Laura graduated from Hollins University in 1962 with a major in English. For the decade of the Sixties, she was an editor in book publishing in New York City.  In 1969 she began climbing and met Guy Waterman, a speechwriter, formerly on Capitol Hill. The couple were married in l972, and in l973, moved to Vermont to establish an off-the-grid homestead. For the next nearly 30 years, Laura and Guy collaboratively wrote books about mountain ethics and stewardship, subjects that grew out of their own climbing life. Those titles include The Green Guide to Low-Impact Hiking and Camping (formerly titled Backwoods Ethics) and Wilderness Ethics: Preserving the Spirit of Wildness. They also penned two books on the social and trailbuilding history of the Northeast's mountain ranges: Forest and Crag and Yankee Rock & Ice. Their collection, A Fine Kind of Madness: Mountain Adventures Tall and True was a posthumous publication for Guy who died in 2000. Guy's choice to take his own life steered Laura to write Losing the Garden: The Story of a Marriage, a memoir about their homesteading, writing, and climbing years, and Laura's attempt to understand her own role in her husband's decision.  The book was  selected as an Editor's Pick by the Boston Globe. Most recently Laura has published a novel, Starvation Shore, about the Lt. Greely Arctic Expedition (1881-1884). Laura, and posthumously Guy, were awarded the David Brower Conservation Award from the American Alpine Club in 2012, and Laura, in 2019, was inducted into the AAC's Hall of Mountaineering Excellence. Guy's death prompted Laura and friends to found the Waterman Fund that works to conserve the alpine areas of northeastern North America. watermanfund.org. Visit Laura's website: laurawaterman.com

STARVATION SHORE REVIEWS:

"The Greely Expedition is one of the great gothic tales from the heroic age of exploration. In lean and elegant prose buttressed by voluminous research. Waterman captures the pathos, the grit, the heroism, and the resolve of this ambitious American undertaking that began with such promise and ended in such tragedy." --Hampton Sides, author of In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeanette

"Starvation Shore is a closely researched evocation of a riveting and tragic chapter of polar exploration; the details Waterman has gleaned from authentic sources has brought the ordeal to vivid life." -- Caroline Alexander, author of The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition

"Starvation Shore is a remarkable novel. It helps for readers to know the history behind it, but one needn't have read deeply on the events to be drawn in. Every page rings true. Both the characters and the setting are completely realized. Whether the cannibalism happened or not (historians can debate this point). Waterman has made the Greely Expedition immediate and real. This book deserves a place among the essential works about one of the most complex tragedies of Arctic exploration." -- David A. James is a Fairbanks based critic and freelance writer. Anchorage Daily News.