About the Author

Audrey Sutherland grew up in California but lived in Hawai'i from 1952 until her death in 2015 at the age of 94. She raised her four children as a single mother, supporting her family by working as a school counselor. In 1962, she decided to explore the coast of Moloka'i by swimming it while towing an inflatable raft with supplies, a story told in Paddling My Own Canoe (Patagonia, 2018). Ever after she was an inveterate water traveler. She was also the author of Paddling Hawai'i. Yoshiko Yamamoto is one of the premier block printers in the Arts and Crafts style. Yamamoto's block prints are letterpress printed using hand cut blocks on acid free paper. She is the co-owner of The Arts and Crafts Press, and co-author of several books about the arts and crafts movement, published by Gibbs Smith and Chronicle.

Reviews

Read this book if: you’re staring at your screen, desperately wishing it was the ocean.

Buy this book for friends who: value adventure and wine in equal measure. --www.stillstoked.com

More than simply a story told from point A (Ketchikan) to point B (Skagway) – a distance of over 560 kilometres! – Paddling North captures Sutherland’s spirit of adventure and infuses it with an appreciation for the finer things in life: food, wine, and warmth. -- www.stillstoked.com

By all accounts, Sutherland was a badass. -- Juneauempire.com

"A sort of guide to life, a sharing of one adventurer's philosophy and her love for what she finds in nature, in testing herself, and in deep thinking. It stretches far past "I went there, I did this" into an examination of life akin to the work of Thoreau, Muir, E. B. White, and others she quotes along the way. She also brings into her text her cultural knowledge of Hawaii and what she learns along the way of Alaska history and indigenous knowledge." -- Anchorage Daily News

"What I liked about her book is just how down to earth it was and the priorities she has. Her reasons for adventure were quite different to a lot of stuff I’ve read. For example, she has recipes in the book. She makes a real effort to collect bits of seaweed and wild garlic along the way. She seems to have her priorities nicely sorted. Also, it’s quite inspiring that she began as a late middle-aged woman to do these sorts of things."

"But the takeaway of the book, the line that stands out for me is when she says, ‘Go simple, go solo, go now.’ It’s an amazing summary of how people should just get on with their adventures." --www.fivebooks.com

"At just 160-some pages, Paddling North can be consumed in one long sitting, but that would be the equivalent of motoring the Northwest Passage. Better to take the leisurely pace of a blow-up kayak, subject to the push and pull of Sutherland’s tidal adventures, as lingering and memorable as a sunset in the far north, seen from a deserted beach on an uninhabited island." -- Adventure Journal