So please can you read to us about how Trudy first learned to swim, helped by her father and two sisters in the Highlands near New York City?

Absolutely.

My pleasure.

Henry Etterly carried a line to the pier, but not the fine filament used for fishing.

Instead, he held a twisted skein of clothesline.

At the water's edge, he stood his youngest daughter before him, and as her sisters looked on, he trussed the length of clothesline around his daughter's waist and torso with the practiced hand of a butcher who had spent years behind the counter wrapping meat, tying her securely but not too tightly.

Leaving her older sisters at Trudy's side, he then walked back up the beach and out upon the pier, uncoiling and playing out the line with each step until he stood above his daughter and could look down on her from atop the pier.

Glenn now reads from the book about Trudy's first big sea race against stars from England and across America.