The Curve of Time

Widowed at the age of thirty-five, Muriel Wylie Blanchet packed up her five children in the summers that followed and set out aboard the twenty-five-foot Caprice. For fifteen summers, in the 1920s and 1930s, the family explored the coves and islands of the West Coast, encountering settlers and hermits, hungry bears and dangerous tides, and falling under the spell of the region’s natural beauty.

Driven by curiosity, the family followed the quiet coastline, and Blanchet—known as Capi, after her boat—recorded their wonder as they threaded their way between the snowfields, slept under the bright stars and wandered through Indigenous winter villages left empty in the summer months.

The Curve of Time weaves the story of these years into a memoir that has inspired generations to seek out their own adventures on the wild West Coast. First published in 1961, less than a year before the author died, Blanchet’s captivating work has become a bestselling classic of travel writing.

Now available from Harbour Publishing, this new edition contains maps of the Pacific Northwest coast showing the journeys of the Caprice as well as an essay on the life and biography of Blanchet by celebrated writer Edith Iglauer.