Layne Beachley: Beneath The Waves

Description

Layne Beachley's story is about the skinny little girl who overcame a king tide of obstacles, from chronic fatigue and depression to debilitating injury and family tragedy, to become an icon in the male-dominated world of competitive surfing. Winner of a record seven women's world championships, she also blazed trails in the mountainous waves of Hawaii's outer reefs, earning respect where it mattered most - in the water. Beneath the surface of the happy, positive public persona is a story of loss, redemption and the search for identity, revealing the details of how Layne and her birth mother, Maggie, found each other twenty-seven years after her birth, the highs and many lows in their quest for reconciliation and the dark secret of Maggie's past. It is also a love story, describing how Layne fell in and out of love with Hawaiian big-wave rider Ken Bradshaw and found true happiness with INXS rock star Kirk Pengilly.

Michael Gordon joined The Age as a 17-year-old cadet and has worked for the paper for more than two decades in roles ranging from surf writer and sports editor to national editor and deputy editor of The Sunday Age. He has also been New York correspondent for the Melbourne Herald and political editor of The Australian. A Walkley award winner, his books include A True Believer, Paul Keating; Reconciliation, A Journey; and Freeing Ali, the Human Face of the Pacific Solution. In March 2006, Michael Gordon won the 2005 Graham Perkin Award for Journalist of The Year for journalistic excellence for his report in April 2005 of the 'forgotten' 54 refugees detained on Nauru. In February 2007, Michael was appointed Saturday editor.