Read a book this summer

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For several days, off and on, every chance I get, I've been navigating a clipper ship around the tip of Cape Horn.Don't I wish that were true?Actually, it is true in a sense -- not literally, but literarily.It's almost as good as the real thing. And I don't have to put up with seasickness or icebergs or mutinous crews or serious lapses in personal hygiene.I've been reading the true adventures of Mary Patten, who set sail in 1856 on the clipper ship Neptune's Car with her captain husband and his crew on a voyage from New York to San Francisco."The Captain's Wife" was written by Douglas Kelley, a native of Fort Smith, Ark., one of several local writers whose work I discovered recently while visiting that fair city.(For the record, I didn't read about going to Fort Smith; I was actually there three days.)Sad to say, "The Captain's Wife" is out of print. I was lucky to get it from the author. No, he doesn't have more copies. And, no, you can't have mine. So, yes, you can skin me just for telling you about it.If it's any consolation, think of all the other books you've never read, and never will, simply because they're out of print, or were never published, or, worst of all, they were never written because the writer said she was busy doing laundry.Anyhow, it's not the book I want to tell you about; it's the experience I had in reading it.To do that, I'm sorry, but I have to tell you a little bit about what you missed.In 1856, when Mary Patten boarded Neptune's Car, she was 19 years old, newly married and -- as she would soon discover -- pregnant.As they neared Cape Horn, at the tip of South America -- where the ship was tossed about like a cork in a Jacuzzi -- the first mate was put in shackles for plotting mutiny. Then the captain, her husband, fell gravely ill. So Mary put the second mate in charge. He was 20, and couldn't read. And she became the navigator, taking bearings with a sextant, as her husband had taught her to do.It's a simple story, well told -- unbelievable if it weren't true -- about ordinary people in extraordinary settings, finding out what they are made of, and what they're capable of doing.I like stories like that. I could hardly put it down, wondering what would happen next.Reading it was almost like being there. It was also about as close as I expect to get to taking a vacation this summer.But I've always vacationed with books. The first I recall, I was 10, spending the summer with my grandmother on her farm. She handed me a book as big as the family Bible."Here," she said, "read this."It was "Gone with the Wind." I read it all summer -- the boldest vacation I ever took.I could list countless books, and the places where they've taken me. And you could list yours for me. We could have a good time doing that.It matters, doesn't it, which books we read, and the kinds of places to which they take us?Some books hold the power to change lives. I dare you to read "To Kill a Mockingbird" or "In Cold Blood" or "Cry the Beloved Country" and not be changed for the better.But as important as the book is the act of reading; in reading lies the magic and the mystery and, most of all, the escape.If you have children or grandchildren or strays on your block, give them books to read this summer. Better yet, read to them and let them read to you.If you can't afford a vacation, buy yourself a paperback. Send me a postcard and tell me about it, saying wish you were here.(Sharon Randall can be contacted at P.O. Box 777394, Henderson NV 89077 or at www.sharonrandall.com.)