Deep Waters is a gripping story of relationship resilience set against the backdrop of Alaska’s dramatic marine wilderness.

Deep Waters

A Memoir of Loss, Alaska Adventure, and Love Rekindled

Eric Hoffer First Horizon Award
FINALIST First Horizon Award, Debut Author

Next Generation Indie Book Awards
WINNER Memoirs: Personal Struggle/Health Issues

Independent Publishers Book Awards, IPPY
Bronze Award West-Pacific: Best Regional Non-Fiction

In this intimate story of relationship resilience, marine biologist Beth Mathews’s fulfilling life as a professor and mother in Alaska is upended when her healthy husband is slammed by a rare type of stroke. Jim’s radical approach to recovery clashes with Beth’s instinct to keep him safe at home and sets them on a collision course as he insists on ambitious sailing expeditions with Beth and their young son in Alaska’s magnificent, yet unforgiving, waters.

She Writes Press • 2023

“A love story that comes at the reader with the gloves off and goes a full twelve rounds.”    

—LYNN SCHOOLER, author of The Blue Bear and Walking Home

“Deep Waters captures with grace and honesty the upheaval and necessary recalibrations that life can present to us at any time, with a keen appreciation for learning to ride the waves into what might be an unexpected but rewarding future.”    

ANCHORAGE DAILY NEWS

“With love as rugged and wild as the Alaskan landscape she made home, biologist Beth Ann Mathews tells the story of another wilderness: marriage after a life-altering stroke. Deep Waters is a thoughtful and provoking read, a reminder that life and love are inexplicably fragile and resilient, full of unexpected discovery.”

—ABBY MASLIN, author of Love You Hard: A Memoir of Marriage, Brain Injury, and Reinventing Love

“Gripping and suspenseful. A must read not only for medical laymen, but for any practicing physician who cares for stroke patients.”

—DR. MAX B. DUNCAN, Neurologist

“If books were birds, this one would be an arctic tern – powerful and graceful, beset by storms and learning to survive and more: to thrive. The writing is feather-light yet strong.”

—KIM HEACOX, author of On Heaven’s Hill and The Only Kayak: A Journey into the Heart of Alaska


Beth Ann Mathews

is a marine biologist, mother of one son, and an author.

She taught biology for two decades at the University of Alaska in Juneau and studied marine mammals with her students in Glacier Bay National Park.

Deep Waters is Beth’s first book.

Photo: Star Dewar