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A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival: A Memoir
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, rowout and offer the drowning person an oar. Do not get in the water.
But
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 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 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 kayak selfrescue, 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.
Only if you are a very able swimmer trained in open-water rescue should you approach drowning victims . . . Reach with a rope or branch, rowout and offer the drowning person an oar. Do not get in the water.
But
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 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 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 kayak selfrescue, 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.
385 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 11, 2026
About the author
Virginia Eubanks
8 books141 followersVirginia Eubanks is a professor and an investigative journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, The Guardian, WIRED.com, and Scientific American. She is the author of the award-winning book Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor. When not sleeping in her truck in the Adirondacks, she lives in Troy, New York.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
July 28, 2026
"Conditions change. You need to change with them."
This is the book I've been waiting for - a memoir about the gravity of caregiving. Although PTSD victims and survivors are the ones who experience a primary trauma, caregivers are witnesses and storytellers about the traumatic event and its aftermath. Over and over and over and over repeating the trauma to medical providers, insurance representatives, friends and family, the state, and case workers (if you're lucky). The mundane, repetitive motions of swimming upstream in a system full of failures becomes a redundant trauma itself, resulting in complex PTSD for the carer, all on top of tending to the current physical and emotional needs of the original survivor. Imagine trying to stay afloat, keeping your loved one alive while also earning an income and staying on top of household tasks, while denial letter after overdraft notice after billing error collaborate to pull you under.
I sincerely appreciated Eubanks's critical examination of the social safety net, criminal justice system, and insurance industry. She pokes holes in the "put on your oxygen mask first" myth - on an airplane, there are trained pilots and flight attendants there to support and direct passengers when chaos strikes. When caregiving after a traumatic event, there is no such guidance.
After years of losing herself in caring for her partner after a violent attack leaves him vulnerable to mental health crises and substance abuse, Eubanks makes the decision to turn inward. Tending to her own garden, she explores various therapy modalities from behavioral to somatic: "What is the triumphant gesture of traumatic caregiving?" In an attempt to put on her own oxygen mask (years too late), she finds a sense of control in wilderness first aid, forest rangering, and open water lifesaving. Not only is this book a mirror for those drowning in caregiving duties; it's a training manual for conscientiously approaching common emergencies like losing the trail, getting frostbite, or being swept up by a riptide.
RIYL A Living Remedy: A Memoir, What My Bones Know
This is the book I've been waiting for - a memoir about the gravity of caregiving. Although PTSD victims and survivors are the ones who experience a primary trauma, caregivers are witnesses and storytellers about the traumatic event and its aftermath. Over and over and over and over repeating the trauma to medical providers, insurance representatives, friends and family, the state, and case workers (if you're lucky). The mundane, repetitive motions of swimming upstream in a system full of failures becomes a redundant trauma itself, resulting in complex PTSD for the carer, all on top of tending to the current physical and emotional needs of the original survivor. Imagine trying to stay afloat, keeping your loved one alive while also earning an income and staying on top of household tasks, while denial letter after overdraft notice after billing error collaborate to pull you under.
I sincerely appreciated Eubanks's critical examination of the social safety net, criminal justice system, and insurance industry. She pokes holes in the "put on your oxygen mask first" myth - on an airplane, there are trained pilots and flight attendants there to support and direct passengers when chaos strikes. When caregiving after a traumatic event, there is no such guidance.
After years of losing herself in caring for her partner after a violent attack leaves him vulnerable to mental health crises and substance abuse, Eubanks makes the decision to turn inward. Tending to her own garden, she explores various therapy modalities from behavioral to somatic: "What is the triumphant gesture of traumatic caregiving?" In an attempt to put on her own oxygen mask (years too late), she finds a sense of control in wilderness first aid, forest rangering, and open water lifesaving. Not only is this book a mirror for those drowning in caregiving duties; it's a training manual for conscientiously approaching common emergencies like losing the trail, getting frostbite, or being swept up by a riptide.
RIYL A Living Remedy: A Memoir, What My Bones Know
March 9, 2026
Whether or not it's what she intended with the title, Eubanks' memoir is also a fucking fantastic guide to surviving when your partner is diagnosed with PTSD, and when your own boundaries have to come into play. Eubanks pairs discussions of lifeguarding and survival and emergencies with its own kind of emergency - surviving with a partner with c-PTSD and harmful coping methods, and the point when you have to pull out to put on your own gasmask. I have a feeling a lot of people are going to have issue with the fact that this doesn't end "happily" (ie, the relationship is saved and cPTSD never reared its ugly head again), but ends in the best possible place for everyone involved. (Also, Professor Eubanks - what you survived was abuse, even if it didn't meet all the typical presentations.) It's up there for one of hte most unique things I've read in a while, and I can't wait for you to read it this summer.
February 6, 2026
Oh this book! Such a raw and immersive journey into PTSD. It was one of those books I had to read slowly to not only savour but to take the time to process the emotions that came with it. I had already started telling family members to read it before I had finished it. Can’t wait for it to come out so they can experience it as well.
Thank you to the publisher for the ARC!
Thank you to the publisher for the ARC!
August 11, 2026
A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving: Lessons on Love, Care, and Survival Book Review
Virginia Eubanks's A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving is a moving and unexpectedly funny memoir about what it means to care for someone when life suddenly becomes a wilderness.
The book begins with a devastating event: Eubanks's partner, Jason, is brutally attacked, setting off years of medical, financial, bureaucratic, and emotional difficulties. What follows is not simply a story about recovering from one traumatic event, but an exploration of what happens to the person who becomes a caregiver in its aftermath.
One of the memoir's most important contributions is its attention to “collateral” PTSD—the trauma that caregivers can experience while supporting someone else through a crisis. Eubanks makes visible a form of suffering that can easily disappear behind the needs of the person who was directly injured.
The book's most inventive element is its lifesaving metaphor. An old open water rescue manual becomes an unexpected source of wisdom, leading Eubanks toward kayaking, winter survival, wilderness first aid, lifeguarding, and other forms of practical preparation. These experiences become more than survival skills; they become ways of thinking about dependence, vulnerability, preparation, and care.
Eubanks also brings her background as a reporter and activist to the journey, drawing on research and conversations with experts to understand trauma and resilience. Yet the memoir never loses its personal core.
There is also a welcome sense of humor throughout the premise. Faced with circumstances that could easily make for an unbearably heavy narrative, Eubanks finds moments of absurdity and warmth without diminishing the seriousness of what she and Jason endure.
Ultimately, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving is about more than surviving catastrophe. It asks what it means to care for another person when there is no simple rescue, no guaranteed outcome, and no way to navigate the wilderness alone.
Its most lasting message is also its simplest: resilience is not always an individual achievement. Sometimes survival depends on learning how to reach for one another.
A thoughtful, compassionate memoir for readers interested in caregiving, trauma, resilience, love, and the often invisible networks that allow people to endure difficult times.
Virginia Eubanks's A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving is a moving and unexpectedly funny memoir about what it means to care for someone when life suddenly becomes a wilderness.
The book begins with a devastating event: Eubanks's partner, Jason, is brutally attacked, setting off years of medical, financial, bureaucratic, and emotional difficulties. What follows is not simply a story about recovering from one traumatic event, but an exploration of what happens to the person who becomes a caregiver in its aftermath.
One of the memoir's most important contributions is its attention to “collateral” PTSD—the trauma that caregivers can experience while supporting someone else through a crisis. Eubanks makes visible a form of suffering that can easily disappear behind the needs of the person who was directly injured.
The book's most inventive element is its lifesaving metaphor. An old open water rescue manual becomes an unexpected source of wisdom, leading Eubanks toward kayaking, winter survival, wilderness first aid, lifeguarding, and other forms of practical preparation. These experiences become more than survival skills; they become ways of thinking about dependence, vulnerability, preparation, and care.
Eubanks also brings her background as a reporter and activist to the journey, drawing on research and conversations with experts to understand trauma and resilience. Yet the memoir never loses its personal core.
There is also a welcome sense of humor throughout the premise. Faced with circumstances that could easily make for an unbearably heavy narrative, Eubanks finds moments of absurdity and warmth without diminishing the seriousness of what she and Jason endure.
Ultimately, A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving is about more than surviving catastrophe. It asks what it means to care for another person when there is no simple rescue, no guaranteed outcome, and no way to navigate the wilderness alone.
Its most lasting message is also its simplest: resilience is not always an individual achievement. Sometimes survival depends on learning how to reach for one another.
A thoughtful, compassionate memoir for readers interested in caregiving, trauma, resilience, love, and the often invisible networks that allow people to endure difficult times.
Review of advance copy
This book is right up there with Stephanie Foo's What My Bones Know in its honesty, real focus on healing, and impact on me as a reader with PTSD. Like Fr. Greg Boyle and Lilo and Stitch, Eubanks believes that no one gets thrown away; she has devoted her personal and professional life to creating a community of care. But PTSD, she notes, is tricky because the only cure (human connection) is also the thing it threatens and the thing it is overwhelmed by. J, the partner she cares for after a random beating leaves him foggy, paranoid, agoraphobic, and moody, observes that "Healing is boring, tiny, hard…and forever." I think (and Eubanks observes) that many readers will wonder why she doesn't leave him and save herself. But I loved her steadfastness and her commitment to her nontraditional (at least under capitalism) ideals. Ultimately she and J have to redefine what leaving and staying and relating mean, but they do not abandon each other.
The book's journalistic components are an indictment of a society that actually LOVES to throw people away, at least if our healthcare system and social safety net are any indication. She clarifies that help is out there, even if it is fragmented and subpar, and pushes for better systems and better care. The courses Eubanks takes on water rescue and wilderness survival, and the guides she excerpts, work well as an extended metaphor. She quotes David J. Morris's The Evil Hours: "Trauma is the glimpse of truth that tells us a lie: the lie that love is impossible and peace is an illusion."
I found this book deeply resonant, moving, and hopeful. We should all be so lucky to have someone like Eubanks on our side. We should all be on each other's side.
The book's journalistic components are an indictment of a society that actually LOVES to throw people away, at least if our healthcare system and social safety net are any indication. She clarifies that help is out there, even if it is fragmented and subpar, and pushes for better systems and better care. The courses Eubanks takes on water rescue and wilderness survival, and the guides she excerpts, work well as an extended metaphor. She quotes David J. Morris's The Evil Hours: "Trauma is the glimpse of truth that tells us a lie: the lie that love is impossible and peace is an illusion."
I found this book deeply resonant, moving, and hopeful. We should all be so lucky to have someone like Eubanks on our side. We should all be on each other's side.
August 13, 2026
A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving by Virginia Eubanks is a really vulnerable memoir about the gravity of caregiving someone with PTSD.
In Eubanks experience, her partner experienced a traumatic attack which left him in a cycle of mental health crisis’ and substance abuse issues. This left her feeling not like a partner and primarily like a caregiver, roles that are often intertwined and difficult to differentiate from one another.
I really enjoyed Eubanks consideration of the social safety net and how that needs to differentiate from the one that you share with the person you are a caregiver for. She shares instances where she could easily reach out when her partner had needs for support but when it came to herself, she felt like that net was over extended.
Tending to your own garden as a concept is hard when you’re in the throes of caring for someone in crisis and I’m really proud that Eubanks identified when she needed to turn inward and care for herself first.
With a title like this, and several references to lifeguards and how to navigate survival and emergencies within emergencies, it had a good amount of humor (sometimes dark but oh well) throughout.
Overall, I really enjoyed this and it’s a good read for those in a caregiver role.
4.5 rounded up.
A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving was published August 11th and I received an advanced copy from Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review.
In Eubanks experience, her partner experienced a traumatic attack which left him in a cycle of mental health crisis’ and substance abuse issues. This left her feeling not like a partner and primarily like a caregiver, roles that are often intertwined and difficult to differentiate from one another.
I really enjoyed Eubanks consideration of the social safety net and how that needs to differentiate from the one that you share with the person you are a caregiver for. She shares instances where she could easily reach out when her partner had needs for support but when it came to herself, she felt like that net was over extended.
Tending to your own garden as a concept is hard when you’re in the throes of caring for someone in crisis and I’m really proud that Eubanks identified when she needed to turn inward and care for herself first.
With a title like this, and several references to lifeguards and how to navigate survival and emergencies within emergencies, it had a good amount of humor (sometimes dark but oh well) throughout.
Overall, I really enjoyed this and it’s a good read for those in a caregiver role.
4.5 rounded up.
A Guide to Open Water Lifesaving was published August 11th and I received an advanced copy from Netgalley and the publishers in exchange for an honest review.
August 14, 2026
A caregiver's maze-like journey thru PTSD w/her partner. Thoughtfully written & deeply personal. Examines the question: "How does my partner need to be loved, but also how do I need to be loved?"
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews