When I stumbled across the eARC of this book on NetGalley, I thought to myself, “Okay, this is going to be a heart-breaking memoir, but I’m totally game.” Little did I know that not only would this book break my sensitive and emotional heart, but also it would change my life perspectives while strapped in on the roller-coaster ride it offered.
To summarise the thesis of this book before you go and waste tons of water trying to ChatGPT it: Virginia Eubanks has written a memoir of the phase of her life from 2015 to 2024, which starts when her partner, “J”, was brutally beaten while on a walk to the corner store, just 127 steps from their home. The extent of the injuries was such that J needed 6.5 hours of plastic surgery to get back a fully operational jaw. The trauma from this incident triggered a severe PTSD for J, who was already battling bipolar disorder. Now being elevated to the status of a primary caregiver, Virginia stepped into many shoes just to manage this new role. What follows is a book that shows us how the author navigated the intricacies of the US healthcare and insurance claim system, fighting daily battles internally and externally while holding down a job and career in journalism, while also building her own resilience during this traumatic phase through learning kayaking, deep sea swimming, hiking, bushwhacking, reading a compass, and surviving in the wilderness.
“A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving” is a memoir that reads like an empathetic and emotional instruction manual. All of the chapters have the feel of a compassionate person explaining everything to you in a raw yet sensitive manner. Given the emotional rawness of the prose in this book, I couldn’t read more than a chapter a day. Further, the structuring of the chapters was completely unique and mind-blowing: Every chapter has a mini-introduction by way of actual excerpts from instruction manuals, books, and interviews which are relevant to the topic written in the chapter, followed by the actual chapter itself. How cool is that? And if this wasn’t enough – the fact that this book has been compiled by the author and weaved into a cohesive book from the her own journals, text messages with J and friends, Facebook chats, emails, interviews with friends and loved ones, recordings of therapy sessions is something that has left my jaw dropped on the floor for a really long time
The author’s writing style is slow, intentional, visceral, and intimate. I imagine myself re-reading this book while sitting in a cabin in the mountains, buried under blankets, with a steaming mug of coffee beside me, to truly appreciate the words and mimic the atmosphere reading this book put me in.
The book is divided into 4 parts:
Part 1: Lifesaving
Part 2: Self rescue
Part 3: Wayfinding
Part 4: Coming back
The key themes bucketed into categories include (includes basic spoilers):
PTSD: An introduction to PTSD from a medical perspective, the history of PTSD and the naming of the diagnosis, caregiving for a loved one with PTSD, and the author’s attempts to find relevant resources to read and learn from, substance use disorder and its linkage to PTSD.
Survival training: The author’s experience of becoming a registered lifeguard, learning winter survival, wilderness first aid and bushwhacking through courses conducted in the Adirondack mountains.
Healthcare systems in USA: Navigating the insurance claims procedures, COVID impact on both author and partner, and the society around them, and the author’s attempts at self-sufficiency for food and basic needs during COVID.
Personal life: Building a new home from scratch, the aftermath of the incident, the fractures that started setting in the author’s relationship with her partner during the caregiving process, the support from the artist community.
(spoiler alert end)
The epilogue of the book is about the author camping alone, which seems like a perfect ending to this bittersweet memoir. The appendices of this book have a perfect summary of step-by-step procedures on what to do in an emergency, and resources for reading up more on the topics covered in the book. The acknowledgments in this book have a really long list of all the people Eubanks acknowledges, and this is absolute proof that “A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving” is a thoroughly well researched book, with thousands of collective hours devoted to making a book which will serve as a unique, no-frills, and practical guide for PTSD caregivers looking for support, wisdom, guidance and empathy.
Special thanks to the publisher Farrar, Straus and Giroux for giving me the opportunity to read and review this book.
I would whole-heartedly recommend this book to anyone who is currently in the role of a primary caregiver, or knows someone who is a primary caregiver, to a person suffering from PTSD. Or if you’re a person who enjoys a deeply well-researched memoir. The expected publishing date is 11 August 2026.
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