Kathini: A delicious story of love, loss and a little boat building - Paperback

by David Helsten (Editor), Ana Paula Pinto Damasceno (Author)

Set in the warm, jade-green waters of the northeastern coast of Brazil, Kathini is the true story of everything that came together when Paula's life had completely fallen apart.

Desperate for change in order to rebuild a life that is more in line with her heart, Paula unwittingly finds herself accepting the opportunity to translate for Mr. Burnett - a renowned British yacht designer who has been commissioned to build a 56' wooden sailboat in northern Brazil and is in desperate need of a translator in order to communicate with the local crew. Paula is banking her success on her native knowledge of Portuguese and English and hopeless optimism despite knowing absolutely nothing about boats - never mind how to build one.

Paula's youthful, spontaneous, and laissez-faire attitude, coupled with the taciturn, pragmatic, and stoic Mr. Burnett, creates a collision of contrasts. This draws us into the charming and romantic account of this unlikely partnership between two people who unknowingly stumbled into one another's lives at exactly the right moment.

It's a delectable slice of life tale, told with Paula's singularly self-aware and unencumbered voice. Filled with real tears, belly laughs, and an undercurrent of hope even in the darkness, Kathini is not - by far - the story of how everything came out perfectly as Paula had planned, but rather a lesson in how the twists and turns in our lives might be the very language of the universe preparing us to reach our aspirations - just not exactly the way we planned.