Amazing life and a terrific memoir. Such outstanding achievements. ( )

Jill Heinerth has always loved the water, even though she almost drowned as a toddler. As an adult, she discovered scuba diving. She was a partner in a successful marketing firm, had a nice apartment that she rarely saw, and wasn’t very happy. She decided to walk away from it all, move to the Cayman Islands, and become a dive instructor. Cave diving grabbed her attention and she started down a path that led to her diving for National Geographic and earning world records.

I don’t even remember why I added this to my library wishlist but I’m so glad I did! I’m not a very good swimmer, much less a diver, but I still found Heinerth’s experiences fascinating.

She writes beautifully about what keeps her going back in the water, even after many of her friends have passed away on dives. She loves the beauty of those remote natural areas and knowing that she’s seeing things that no one has seen before. Her experiences lead her to become a conservationist and she writes of the importance of protecting our water resources. It’s all interesting to me.

She’s very clear about the dangers of the sport. She recovers bodies of experienced friends who maybe got a bit too comfortable and forgot to do one small, but crucial, safety check. Sometimes bad luck and natural forces work against these divers. To illustrate how easily things can go wrong, she even writes about getting “The Bends” and one instance when rescuers were called out to find her on an easy dive.

Cave diving is not completely divorced from her personal life so she does share that it’s hard to find a romantic partner who supports and understands her passion. Her work definitely took a toll on her marriage. She also writes about how difficult it is to be a woman in a male-dominated sport. Early in her career, others overlook her accomplishments and focus on her husband like she’s just some sort of appendage instead of a diver in her own right. Internet trolls belittle projects she works on. She’s open about her self-doubt back then but now she’s confident in her abilities and takes full ownership of her work. I found this part of her story particularly empowering.

Ms. Heinerth does necessarily have to use some technical jargon in the book but she always explains what she means and keeps it to a minimum. I really appreciated that.

I listened to the audiobook, which the author reads herself. Her narration was a bit too earnest for my taste but she otherwise did a very capable job.

I highly recommend this for armchair explorers who want a glimpse of a world that few humans will ever see. ( )

I was disappointed. I had hoped this would be more like Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson. This was more Jill's story as indicated by the subtitle. I found it a bit melodramatic. The pacing wasn't quite right for the suspense she was trying to create. We thought too much emphasis on her love life. In fact so much repetition of the problems of her first marriage that my husband and I began to roll our eyes each time the subject came up. The topic is interesting to me, but this just didn't quite do for us. ( )

This is a memoir of a cave diver, a person who explores underwater caves and passages beneath the earth and in icebergs. It's an incredibly dangerous and risky vocation, and I could almost feel the suffocating fear at some of the predicaments that the author got herself into. It would take a very special kind of personality to engage in activities like this, as your life is in danger virtually every time you embark on a mission. Pretty fascinating. ( )

Diver Jill Heinerth recounts her experiences from getting into diving as a young marketing executive to leading the first diving expedition below icebergs in Antarctica. Her excitement for diving is really clear; her descriptions of the landscapes and views she experiences while diving are incredible, and she also makes the logistics of diving quite accessible to readers. She also comments on her life more broadly and how diving has intertwined with her sense of being, from her marriage to her status as one of only a few professional women in diving.

I first learned about this book a while ago, I believe after reading the magnificent Deep a few years ago. I'm very happy that I finally got around to reading it, and I thought it was a fascinating look into another extreme sport that I have very little desire to actually do but that is from a somewhat distant vantage really fascinating. ( )