Do Not Take This Book With You on a Cruise

We interviewed Kathleen Rooney, the author of “Man Overboard!”, to discuss cruises and how easy it is to fall overboard.

The recipe of a perfect summer read: a thrilling plotline, funny internal monologue, and quick-witted sea creatures. Kathleen Rooney’s Man Overboard! has it all. But I wouldn’t recommend taking this book as a companion on your next cruise. For one, the protagonist hates open waters, and by association cruises; and second, he falls overboard.

Man Overboard is a survival story. Patrick “Kick” Kilpatrick is on a Thanksgiving cruise with his family, and somehow ends up in the open ocean in pitch darkness. Each chapter—which is an hour of his life in the lonely Gulf of Mexico—gives insights into his life. The book is partly inspired by James Michael Grimes, who fell overboard in 2022 and survived 20 hours at sea.

The brilliant narrative is told from a single perspective. You meet his family and friends only in flashbacks as he reflects on his journey. His (ex?) girlfriend, sweet sister, intelligent nephew, domineering father, and unbearable brother-in-law pop in and out, while his most enthralling conversations happen with marine animals who both taunt him and encourage him to keep going. 

As you go deeper in the novel, you realize that there’s a lot going on with Kick, besides the conundrum he has found himself in. The clever plot lays groundwork for themes of mental health, climate change, toxic masculinity, and abandonment issues, and it seems fantastical that he is experiencing sunburn as he discusses an oil spill in the Gulf with a turtle. 

After enjoying the book–which brought me out of a reading slump–I interviewed author Kathleen Rooney to get answers to some of my lingering questions. Such as…

FODOR’S: How easy is it really to fall from a cruise ship?

KATHLEEN ROONEY: I found out that the average number of people who fall off cruises each year hovers between 19 and 25. It happens in all sorts of circumstances, like when people are drunk, while taking selfies, while smoking leaning over. It’s not that common, but it happens. 

Can you survive in the water after falling overboard? If so, is the book inspired by real-life incidents?

Most people, when they go into water, often that’s it. You don’t survive the impact; it’s like falling off a building into concrete. And there have been people who have made it many hours and then succumbed. I did a ton of research on if people can survive after falling. You could, but it had to be the right temperature, and if you were physically fit enough, and if the weather was cooperative.

Brett Archibald from Cape Town, South Africa, was on a surfing trip with his friends on a sizable boat. They were in the Indian Ocean, and he got food poisoning. He got up in the middle of the night to throw up, and he was so sick and dehydrated that he fell overboard. He was in the water for 28 hours, and he got rescued. He went back and surfed the next possible day!

Then there was James Michael Grimes, who fell into the Gulf of Mexico and survived 20 hours. I don’t know that much about the Indian Ocean, but I thought that the Gulf of Mexico would be more in my wheelhouse. So, he also inspired Kick. But [Grimes] is different from Kick. He was a father, and I read that he was determined to survive to see his daughter. I didn’t go in that direction, but those two people were impressive to me.

Have you been on cruises before?

No, I haven’t. I’m very afraid of the ocean, like Kick. I didn’t see the ocean until I was 19. I saw it on a trip to Costa Rica with my best friend. I went snorkeling and had a panic attack. I put on my swim fins, got my snorkel, and just saw the Atlantic Ocean and started hyperventilating and crying. I got over it; I swim in the ocean now, but it’s just so big.

That’s why I gave Kick this fear, even though he’s a very good swimmer, and that’s why I have never been on a cruise.

Why did you choose a cruise for the setting of this book? A high-stakes family holiday around Thanksgiving is stressful itself. What is the sea serving to the plot?

Kick needs to fall into the ocean as a character because he’s really troubled. He’s got all this unresolved grief about his family and his mom. He’s been on the surface of his life, so he needs to go into the depths to get better.

I wanted the symbolism of water. I did a lot of research, and I love Rachel Carson, who’s a writer who does a lot of environmental writing. Her most famous book is Silent Spring, but she has two books about the ocean. She points out that the way the ocean works, it’s saline composition with different chemicals in it. It’s really similar to the human womb amniotic experience that all of us had, but none of us can remember. As much as I love the rainforest and as much as plane crashes are interesting, there’s just something about the ocean that is so primal and so mysterious. 

Any interesting insights about cruising from your research?

Cruising is relatively recent. Until the 1840s, ships were used for a specific purpose like trade or immigration. It was always driven by those, like, super functional utilitarian things, until around the 1840s, when you had Thomas Cook, who was the world’s first travel agent, starting to arrange European tours by land. 

From there, people started to realize that it was possible to make a ship fun, and if you’re not in steerage or a sailor working, it’s beautiful. Then early cruise liners had to make it commercial. They tried to convince ladies of leisure, kind of upper-crusty women who wanted to go on an adventure but have a civilized experience. So, that’s part of why the aesthetic of cruise ships is still flashy and extravagant.

They wanted to make the ships look as little like you were on a boat as possible. They wanted you to walk on the ship and be like, “Oh, I’m in a beautiful hotel. I’m in a lovely restaurant with a million foods to eat, and oh, it’s like a concert hall.” They had to do that out of necessity, and then that aesthetic has kind of stayed for the modern duration of cruising. 

And one last cool thing is people usually lose a ton of weight in water. People usually lose between, like, 10 and 20 pounds of water in actual weight if they’re going through a survival in the water situation.

If you’re interested in more cruising acts, I would recommend The Heart of the Sea by Nathaniel Philbrick, which is about the whaleship Essex that was sunk by a whale. It was also Herman Melville’s inspiration for Moby Dick. And then the other book that I would recommend is called A Marriage at Sea by Sophie Elmhurst, which is about this British couple who had the same thing happen. They were sailing around the world when a whale hit them, and then they spent 118 days adrift until they got picked up by a Korean fishing vessel. 

What should cruisers know about survival stories such as these?

In my research, I found that people think if I’m in the water, they’ll just scoop me out. But it’s really hard. A bucket rescue, like the Coast Guard does, is not easy. You don’t just swoop in and pick the guy up. It requires all this coordination, especially because the person is so exhausted, and they can’t cooperate. 

It’s not just a survival story. A big part of the book is mental health. You also touch upon toxic masculinity, and there are social issues like oil spills and climate change. How did you balance these themes and tie them together with Kick’s most immediate predicament? 

I wanted the book to read super entertaining, like a page turner. So I set myself the structural limit that every chapter would be one hour in the water, and I told myself that I wasn’t gonna let any of the chapters go over about 2,000 words. I really wanted it to be super tight, so people would be really curious if he was gonna make it.

I knew I wanted to have all the sea creatures and the animals and the climate change piece and to get every single family member to become a character, even though we don’t see them that much in person. I wanted to get his relationship with Justine [his girlfriend], his plan to do cardio clowning at the gym, and if Ankush [his boss] would let him. If I was in a chapter and I didn’t get to something or I ran out of words, it was too bad for me. I had to wait till later, or it didn’t go in. 

One of my favorite characters to write was Ulysses, Kick’s 10-year-old nephew. 
His name is just a little touch on the Odyssey. I do want it to be a little mini epic. He’s sort of on his own little Odyssey, so is he gonna get home, kind of like Odysseus? 

Cruises are not Kick’s idea of fun; it was his stepmother Pam’s love that brought him there. What would he enjoy as a holiday? 

I think he and Justine would go on a European vacation because he’s never really been out of the country, and I think he would want to see art museums and literary sites. 

Kick talks to ocean creatures when he’s in the water. Is he hallucinating?

I’m happy for people to take it however they want, but all the creatures that I have him encounter are creatures that really would be in the Gulf of Mexico in November. It’s kind of fantasy and speculation that he’s talking to a Hawkville sea turtle. In fact, long-distance swimmers, who purposefully swim and those who haven’t fallen in, hallucinate a lot. There’s just something about exerting yourself, even if you’re doing it on purpose, that your mind goes weird places.

It was fun for me to write about all the ocean creatures, and I wanted Kick, and also travelers, to think about the other life on the planet besides humans.

Do you think people act differently on a cruise–or a holiday in general?

Your relationship to time, especially on a cruise, alters from how you normally experience it. Your perception of time changes. When you’re just doing the stuff you always do, time goes really fast because your mind zips you through. But when you’re doing something different, whether it’s a holiday or a new job or meeting a new person, everything slows down because you have to be present. If you’re going through something, it can also intensify that, which is what happens to Kick.

Traveling for so many people is a way to get outside of their normal life and break their routine. In a very time-is-money society, when we’re just doing our work, we have a really hard time stopping, reflecting, fixing what needs to be fixed. The beautiful thing about travel is that you don’t require a life-or-death experience [to self-reflect]. 

Is there a trip that fundamentally changed you?

There are two. One is India. In 2024, I got invited to lead this writing retreat that’s in the Himalayan foothills. You fly in and out of Delhi, and they take you to see the Taj Mahal in Agra. But then you take the train up and go more hours in a car, and you’re in a little village in the foothills. It’s like another world. There’s something about mountains that are that ancient and mean so much to so many cultures.

The other trip was my 20th wedding anniversary trip to France with my husband, my sister, her husband, and their two kids. My sister is my best friend, and we got married in a double wedding ceremony in Brazil. So, being together and seeing all the sights was very fun.

If Man Overboard! had a travel takeaway, what would you hope readers bring with them on their next trip?

You can go far away, and you can do all this exotic stuff. But at the end of the day, a lot of what you’re gonna discover on travel has to do with you. 

Kathleen Rooney has also written Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey and From Dust to Stardust. She teaches English and creative writing at DePaul University in Chicago.