In 1992, Joe Coomer bought a fine old boat: a sixty-year-old motorsailer, with a noble bow and only a hint of age. With his wife and their families gathered alongside him, he spent the next four years learning to master the boat he called Yonder.

In Sailing in a Spoonful of Water, Coomer writes of reviving the vintage craft with an amateur sailor's infectious delight and a novelist's keenness of observation. Yet this lyrical and moving memoir is more than just a book about boating: As he gains his footing aboard Yonder, Coomer's narrative reflects back on signal events in his life - events that have drawn him, again and again, to river or lake or ocean.

Gazing into the water, Coomer perceives the reflections of his wife and their parents and grandparents, drawn always to the water along with him. And, in prose that mingles humor, generosity, and pure, awed delight, he finds in them his own safest harbor. A book that will appeal to readers of writers as diverse as Tracy Kidder and E. Annie Proulx, Sailing in a Spoonful of Water is a work of rare warmth and wonder.