Gift From The Sea

Anne Morrow Lindbergh (1906-2001) was an American-born writer and the author of Gift from the Sea (1955). Lindbergh in many ways embodied the spirit of adventure and exploration to which she exhorted readers in Gift from the Sea. She married famous aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh (1902-1974) in 1929 and pursued her own passion for aviation. She became the first American woman to earn a first-class glider pilot’s license in 1930 and throughout the 1930s worked as a co-pilot and radio operator to her husband on numerous exploratory flights and aerial surveys. Lindbergh also became the first woman to win the National Geographic Society’s Hubbard Medal, which she was awarded in 1934 for her aviation exploits. This adventuring spirit continued well into Lindbergh’s later life. As her daughter Reese explains in her 2015 introduction to Gift from the Sea, at the age of 75 Lindbergh hiked down into the Haleakala Crater in Maui, Hawaii.

Lindbergh authored many other works of poetry and nonfiction, including North to the Orient (1935); Listen! The Wind (1938); The Wave of the Future: A Confession of Faith (1940); The Steep Ascent (1944); The Unicorn and Other Poems (1935-1955); Dearly Beloved (1962); and Earth Shine (1969). She also won numerous literary awards, including Most Distinguished General Non-Fiction of 1935 in the inaugural National Book Awards for North to the Orient and a National Book Award in 1938 for Listen! The Wind.