48 Days to Barbados

“48 DAYS TO BARBADOS IS VISCERAL: THE SMELL OF ONIONS PERMEATING A SLEEPING BAG, THE TASTE OF SULFUROUS WATER, THE SOUND OF WATER AGAINST THE HULL…IT’S A COURAGEOUS TALE ABOUT HOW WE FIND OURSELVES BY LOSING OUR BEARINGS.”

— KIMBERLY KING PARSONS, Bestselling Author Of We Were The Universe

In 1999, experienced sailor Karson Brown was in her late twenties, married, and searching for something she couldn’t quite name when she got the call she’d been dreaming of her whole life — a chance to sail across the Atlantic Ocean. The plan seemed straightforward: Brown and her best friend would join Captain Pam, whom they’d never met, in Portugal and help her sail her thirty-four-foot boat Voyager to Florida as part of an all-female crew.

What happened next drove Brown to the edge of her physical, mental, and emotional limits as the Atlantic began dismantling, piece by piece, every certainty she had brought aboard.

In 48 Days to Barbados, a seemingly routine sailboat delivery becomes five weeks of shifting itineraries, a failed engine, contaminated water, dwindling provisions, and no clear way home as Hurricane Lenny threatens from afar. Yet the greatest uncertainty lived within Brown herself. Far from her Seattle home and confined with two women she was only beginning to understand, Brown was forced to confront the fractures in her marriage, the complicated legacy of her mother, and the deep longing she finally allowed herself to recognize.

Told with candor, humor, and reverence for the sea, 48 Days to Barbados is a memoir of a lifelong Pacific Northwest sailor confronted by extreme nautical circumstances who survives by learning to trust her inner voice and the ocean she has profoundly loved since childhood.

Learn more at redfernpress.com.

Author and artist Karson Brown grew up sailing and living aboard boats in the Pacific Northwest. She turned twenty-one on a fishing vessel in the Bering Sea, and crossed the Atlantic Ocean aboard a thirty-four-foot sailboat during hurricane season before turning thirty. Karson raised her two children along the shores of Vashon Island surrounded by a menagerie of critters. She is a writer, photographer, artist, and lifelong devotee of water. Karson is an alumna of Joyce Maynard's "Write By The Lake Workshop", in Guatemala. She currently resides in the Pacific Northwest collecting shells and befriending seagulls. Karson has four short stories in the Vine Leaves Press 50 Give or Take Anthology; two in the November 2025 edition and two in the November 2026 edition. 48 Days to Barbados is Karson's debut memoir published by Red Fern Press.

Steph West is an award-winning writer and editor, and festival-accepted director and producer. She was a former Gannett/USA Today Network and Fox Sports Ohio reporter. She covered the NHL and Columbus Blue Jackets for five seasons and appeared on Blue Jackets Live as a special guest correspondent several times throughout her tenure. West has won multiple Society of Professional Journalists, Cleveland Press Club, and AP awards, including seven Ohio SPJ awards in 2021 for the creative team she led as Vice President of Content at 614 Media Group. She's also an Emmy-nominated (regional) film producer and director with two Silver Telly Award credits for her work leading the video portion of a veteran's project with the Columbus College of Art + Design. West won the 2025 gold medal in sports fiction from the North American Book Awards for her hockey novel The Third Period. In 2023 she won the WIFVNE Sports Screenplay Contest (first and second places) for Clean Break (football) and The Third Period (hockey), and the Firebird Book Award Competition for her debut memoir On Fire.