ABOUT THE BOOK:

Boat Bastard (June 4, 2002; ReganBooks) is a far cry from a standard love story. Through spare and lucid prose author Deborah van Rooyen has woven a highly personal tale that is precise in its details yet universal in its message of love gone awry. So forget the fairy tales, and join two larger-than-life personalities as they conduct their own private battle of the sexes, a lively brawl that spans thirteen years, three continents, two religions, one war zone, and various marinas and waterways up and down the Eastern Seaboard.

Meet "the Captain," an advertising film director turned sailor, whose ambivalent feelings and stubborn loyalty towards the seafaring life finally prove too much to bear. And author van Rooyen, a strong-willed art director and a single mother who would do anything to make the relationship work-except, of course, sacrifice all that she is for the sake of a happy ending.

From the waters of the Chesapeake Bay to the fast-paced Boston advertising world, from Israel to France to Cape Cod, this stormy love affair plays out at sea and on land, in public and in bed. In spare and often hilariously deadpan prose, van Rooyen lays bare the thin threads that hold she and her lover together: globe-trotting and high-profile professions, bad marriages and good sex, broken children and broken hearts. Women everywhere will recognize the tortuous vignettes of this mating dance, which include encounters with the"in-between girlfriend," who rips up the fragile tulip bulbs van Rooyen had planted in the Captain's garden; "Best Buddy," the Captain's sailing companion, who assures van Rooyen that he "will outlast her;" and the Captain's retired-diplomat father, whose casual admission that, in 1947, he haplessly helped draw the map that created the State of Israel leaves van Rooyen speechless.

Add to this mix some Jewish dilemmas, some English manners, tropical birds of paradise, a South of France funeral, an Israeli Christmas, a Jordanian New Year, a castle in Spain, and a forgiving American Thanksgiving, and you've just scratched the surface of this often chaotic-and wholly compelling-relationship.

Humorous, poignant, and outrageous, Boat Bastard is a memoir for both women and men who have tried to get it right (and sometimes do), but most often don't, and can't figure out why. This book is for men who want to understand what went wrong and for the women who already know (but are happy and relieved to have van Rooyen's faithful corroboration.)

Boat Bastard begins at the end. From the cramped cabin of The Captain's 36-foot sailboat, van Rooyen examines her stormy relationship, recognizing, finally, that "the man that I love is not the man that I love sailing." After more than a decade-long journey, complete with mishaps and miscommunications, van Rooyen jumps ship, choosing to live her own life rather than merely follow along in the Captain's shadow. Given her enormous wit and tremendous heart, her readers would expect nothing less.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Deborah van Rooyen is a writer and award-winning creative director based in Boston, Massachusetts. The author of My Grandfather's Brother's Son, published in Israel, she is currently working on a new book of memoirs: Jewish in Jordan: A View from the Other Side.

BIRDS OF PARADISE
South of France

       After a few years of prodding, the Captain nervously organizes a formal introduction to his father, now enjoying tax-free retirement living with his second wife on the French Riveria. The Captain has been warming his father up for five days before my arrival, but I know his expectations are not high.
       "My father didn't like my first wife because she wore pants," he mentions.
       I wear a smart black dress. We are to have cocktails precisely at 6 p.m. at the Ambassador's residence, a Belle ...poque penthouse apartment overlooking the Côte D'Azur.
       Before our entrance, we dash into an expensive-looking florist's across the boulevard to organize a bouquet delivery to follow up our visit. After some discussion, I art-direct an arrangement of exotic tropical flowers, including four stalks of majestic bright red-and-orange flaming birds-of-paradise from the island of Mauritius, two rare South African proteas, a fan of jungle ferns mixed with yellow-striped elephant grass, and one deep violet orchid from Tahiti.