RISK

A fearless kayaker takes on parenthood and childhood trauma in Norman’s debut memoir.

Norman was no stranger to risk. As a champion whitewater rafter of international renown, she knew more than most about the unexpected currents waiting around the next bend in the river. “I learned to channel the emotional intensity of the situation into the energy needed to face the danger,” she writes of learning to kayak with her father as a teen. “I soon found that encountering a situation that scares you, and doing it anyway, can prepare you for other life challenges.” Even so, Norman felt unprepared when, at the age of 57, she was forced to step in to parent her 4-year-old nephew, Seth. Seth—the son of Norman’s twin brother David (a perennially broke hoarder) and David’s estranged (and incarcerated) ex-girlfriend 32 years his junior—was dealt a rough hand from the start. Norman invited David and Seth to share her California home in the hope of helping them both escape their impoverished lives in Ohio, but soon after their arrival, it became clear that David’s severe alcoholism precluded him from being a good father to his son. With the help of her wife Lisa, Norman was forced to take up the mantle of mom, a role that brought with it a cascade of painful memories of a traumatic childhood shaped by her own mother’s multiple sclerosis. Told in alternating timelines, Norman’s memoir describes how the lessons she learned in rough water helped her to sort out the chaos of her past and provide a stable, loving home for Seth. Norman’s muscular prose confidently pulls the reader through the author’s voyage of self-discovery: “Instead of acting like a piece of flotsam being pushed down the river at random,” she writes of slalom kayaking, “I learned to read and feel the water…to use the current to my advantage—to work withthe river rather than fighting it or drifting downstream at its mercy.” Vulnerable and often wise, this is a truly memorable parenting story.

A fascinating and heartfelt chronicle of athleticism and family.