A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Life

“Life is a work in progress” and Joan Anderson’s autobiography A Year by the Sea: Thoughts of an Unfinished Life encourages us to take time to reflect. Joan has been married many years and she and her husband have raised two sons to adulthood. One evening Joan’s husband comes home from work and tells her that it’s time to pack her bags, his job is requiring them to, once again, move. This time Joan resists. Her life has been dedicated to husband and sons. Now she needs time for herself. What follows Joan’s decision is a year spent alone in a rustic family cottage on Cape Cod. Anderson gives communing with nature a new meaning when she swims with seals, digs and sells clams for extra money, works in a fish shop, and walks the beaches in all types of weather. This book and Anderson’s follow up A Walk on the Beach: Tales of Wisdom from an Unconventional Woman give women, searching for a sense of independence and identity, solace and the realization that it is important to nurture ones’ self.