BOAT BASTARD: A Love/Hate Story

The "boat bastard" in question is van Rooyen's lover, "Captain," a newly retired advertising film director with a 36-foot sailing sloop, although he could be any man with a "one-foot-in, one-foot-out" attitude to romance. The author, a creative director in Boston, fell in love with this Hemingway wannabe on a work assignment and spent the next 13 years trying to figure out what to do about him. Life on board ship is enormously frustrating for this otherwise capable woman—"I grow stupid on the boat," she confesses, injuring herself constantly, losing verbal skills and losing her sense of self. Her man is so egotistical and emotionally unavailable that parallel troubles surface on shore, whether they're in Amman, Cape Cod, the Chesapeake Bay or France. The memoir's prologue prop—a castrated voodoo doll—reminds van Rooyen of her anger at the casual slights she's suffered; the retelling of her on-again, off-again romance reminds her of the love she still feels, long after she's jumped ship. Her confessional style is funny and self-deprecating, leaking enough about her own very checkered life (her teen years on a kibbutz, her rescue of her daughter from a kidnapping attempt by her ex, her project consulting to the queen of Jordan on a venture to market Palestinian women's handicrafts) to pique readers' interest and sympathy. Fans of NPR's Satellite Sisters program know the tune: "reader, I love him, but I wasn't getting anything back." Agent, Charles Bell Everitt. (June 4)

Forecast:Author promos in New England will help generate local interest among wise women readers.