“Eubanks is both a thorough reporter and a beautiful prose stylist…This eloquent, well-buttressed plea for improved support for trauma survivors is itself a significant contribution.” — Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)
A spirited, wise, often hilarious, profoundly moving story of one woman’s efforts to survive caregiving, trauma, love, and the systems seemingly set up to fail us.
Only if you are a very able swimmer trained in open-water rescue should you approach drowning victims . . . Reach with a rope or branch, row out and offer the drowning person an oar. Do not get in the water.
But also:
No one survives the wilderness alone.
One night, Virginia Eubanks received the kind of news we all fear. Her beloved partner had been attacked, brutally beaten just steps from their house. In the weeks, then months and years that followed, they faced a cascade of setbacks: police disinterest, suspended health insurance, inadequate medical care, lost income, lost friends, endless paperwork, and a serious case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Then, a second case. In her time tending to him, Eubanks had developed what is known as “collateral” PTSD, common among caregivers but rarely discussed.
A reporter and an activist, Eubanks turned to reliable sources to figure out how to heal: scientists, therapists, trauma theorists, social movements. But it wasn’t until she happened on an old lifesaving manual that she found practical advice that actually helped. Inspired by these lessons, she signed up for a series of classes: kayak self rescue, winter survival 101, map and compass, bushwhacking, wilderness first aid, lifeguarding. In a memoir as disarmingly funny as it is quietly wise, Eubanks draws lessons in kinship from these experiences, her research, and interviews with everyone from neuroscientists to forest rangers. The result is a genuinely moving, hopeful, darkly funny story of two people caught in their own kind of wilderness, trying not just to survive but to truly care for each other. Built from cataclysmic loss and tenacious love, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving challenges readers to reconsider the networks of care that sustain our lives, reminding us that no one survives the wilderness alone.
Publication date: August 11, 2026 ISBN: 9780374611798
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Praise for A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving:
“For anyone who’s been told that trauma is a chance for growth, or that wounds are where the light comes in, Virginia Eubanks has written a scorching reply to the ‘exhausting bullshit’ foisted on caregivers. A furiously honest, beautiful, and riveting story about how she managed to stay sane, solvent, and loving. I read it into the night.”
—Larissa MacFarquhar, author of Strangers Drowning
“A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving is a remarkable story of how to escape the trauma and sorrow of the present by cultivating experiences that change who you can become in the future.”
―Lisa Feldman Barrett, author of How Emotions are Made and Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain
“In her breathtaking and important new book, part deeply felt memoir, part sharp investigative journalism, Virginia Eubanks shows, with focused rage, that caregivers are paying the price for multiple systems failures, from dysfunctional health care and tangled bureaucracy to the absence of helpful policies and the hell of broken voice prompts. Caregivers deserve better choices, she argues, than martyrdom or abandoning those they love to save themselves.”
―Brigid Schulte, author of Over Work: Transforming the Daily Grind in the Quest for a Better Life
“In its prose, research, and insights, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving surprises, excoriates, and delights, even while it lays bare the enormous challenges of caregiving and self-care. As I followed Virginia Eubanks on this journey of healing, I found new ideas on how to live; reading this brilliant book may just give you the tools and hope you need for your own survival.”
―Emily Maloney, author of Cost of Living
“Virginia Eubanks jumps into the deep end with kin caregivers and our attempts to show our loved ones that we’re present and capable. But don’t worry—this book doubles as a flotation device, held buoyant through her writing, authority, and humility. A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving is an enveloping, spell-casting memoir for anyone curious about how to navigate the strange wilderness of caregiving and not only survive, but thrive.”
—Nicholas Triolo, author of The Way Around
“Some writers you admire, some you love. With Virginia Eubanks it’s both—for her tenacity, her noble curiosity, her big, honest heart, and her capacity for laughter as she pursues help for another’s calamity, which becomes her own. Her way out is open water, the coldest element in which to test one’s capacity to save oneself. In the bargain, she rescues us.”
—Roger Rosenblatt, author of Kayak Morning
“In this book, Virginia Eubanks breaks new ground, rigorously reporting on her own experience with a kind of PTSD shared by millions of Americans… I’m sure many other readers will be made more brave by it as well.”
—Alissa Quart, author of Bootstrapped
Virginia Eubanks 