Take the Long Way Home, a memoir of the author’s years as an engineer on offshore oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, will be the first book to tell the story of the isolation and hardships faced by a solitary woman, one of few women employed in one of America’s most dangerous professions, in the rough and tumble world of oil exploration. The year was 1981, Reagan was in the White House, oil prices hit thirty-two dollars a barrel and Schlumberger, an oil-field service company, hired seven hundred engineers, fully one percent of all the engineers graduating from American colleges that year, including a handful of women. Take the Long Way Home chronicles the author’s years on the oilrigs and the extraordinary women she met there.

The thread that ties the memoir together is a coming of age story of a smart, ambitious, but naïve young woman who seeks and finds the limits of her mind, her body, her strength and stamina. Another important theme running through the memoir is the exploration of femininity, beauty and the question of what is “woman’s work”.

Memoirs are particularly popular and the audience for Take the Long Way Home is women who enjoy stories of pioneering women, as well as anyone looking for a good read. Subsidiary rights include movie and TV. The author has also written the screenplay adaptation.

Reader Reaction to Take the Long Way Home: This is a great story; well written, humorous, and full of fascinating "behind-the-scenes" glimpses of life as an oil exploration engineer. In the end, however, the thing that really makes this book worth the read is the author's willingness and ability to share her own personal journey. Her story moved me deeply and made me freshly aware of the joys and challenges of my own life.