As dusk fell on Aug 6, 1926,19-year-old Gertrude "Trudy" Ederle had already been swimming the English Channel for nearly 12 hours since dawn.
In that year, Ederle, who was from the United States, stood as the world's most remarkable female swimmer, having secured Olympic medals and set over a dozen world records. The English Channel between France and the United Kingdom was her only remaining challenge.
The water was just above 15 C, as chilly as the surrounding air, and rain poured down as two-meter-high waves tossed her relentlessly. Her tongue was swollen from salt water, and her limbs felt numb. Wearing a daring two-piece silk swimsuit, she was coated in lanolin and petroleum jelly, with a snug rubber cap covering her hair. Amber-tinted goggles protected her eyes as she used the American crawl stroke, aiming for Dover Beach in the UK.
About two and a half hours later, she landed at Kingsdown Beach, 5 kilometers away from the target, due to the influence of the currents. Her time of 14 hours and 34 minutes was two hours faster than anyone else before her. She not only became the first woman in the world to swim the 33.7 km across the English Channel, but she also broke the men's record, inspiring millions of women to break down traditional stereotypes and pursue their dreams.
Recently, a Chinese translation of Young Woman and the Sea: How Trudy Ederle Conquered the English Channel and Inspired the World, a nonfiction work by US writer Glenn Stout, has been released by Citic Press.
Stout, a veteran sports journalist and author and editor of nearly 100 books, first encountered Ederle's story in 2000 as a headline in a newspaper on microfilm, "Gertrude Ederle Becomes First Woman to Swim English Channel".
Swimming the Channel is more difficult than climbing Qomolangma (known as Mount Everest in the West), according to Stout. Since Tenzing Norgay and Sir Edmund Hillary's historic ascent in 1953, more than 3,000 people have reached the summit of the world. In contrast, only about 900 swimmers have successfully crossed the English Channel.
In 2003, Stout started collecting all the news reports he could that were written about Ederle. Drawing from thousands of articles, the author vividly brings to life the legendary woman's personality, her accomplishments in swimming, the story of her English Channel crossing, the challenges she encountered, and how she overcame various obstacles to ultimately achieve her goal.
"The challenge of the book was: How could I animate a subject and her accomplishment, particularly one that took place more than eight decades ago, and does not easily lend itself to narrative? How could I make those 14 and a half hours Trudy spent in the water compelling?" said Stout in a speech at a literary event in mid-August co-organized by Citic Press Group, British luxury brand Burberry and the fashion magazine Fantastic Man during the Shanghai Book Fair.
To achieve this, he said, he needed to provide the proper context for Ederle's story by weaving together several narratives: the geology and history of the English Channel, the history of swimming, the history of women's athletics, and Trudy's personal story. He wanted to gradually interlace these stories so they converged as the heroine approached the Channel, ensuring that the reader would have all the necessary information to fully appreciate her quest and accompany her on her journey.
He seems to have achieved this goal. On the Chinese reviewing platform Douban, a reader Nelly. L writes in the comments for the book that "reading it all the way through is absolutely thrilling". On the Amazon page of the book, a reader named Barry Sparks writes, "When Trudy reaches shore, it makes you want to stand up and cheer."
Undoubtedly, the central story of the book is the swim itself, Stout said.
He uses two chapters to explain how the swim unfolds, trying to duplicate Ederle's reality. He conducted extensive research, reading everything available about her, watching old films, looking through photos, and reading blogs, diaries and stories about other swimmers, as well as immersing himself in 1920s fashions, music and slang.
Writing such a book is like building a brick wall, with each fact being a brick. "You have to have enough bricks to make a complete structure, so each snippet of information you find becomes extremely, extremely important," he said.
For example, to know about the exact weather conditions on Aug 6, 1926, he checked the official report from the National Meteorological Archive of the British Met Office. To accurately understand the experience of swimming in 15 C seas, he spent time immersed in water of the same temperature. To try to understand the reality of swimming for hours through 2-meter-high waves in 30 kph winds, he spent hours kayaking on Lake Champlain in Vermont in all types of weather, although he admitted that it was very different from swimming.
"The truth always makes the best story," he said.
At one point, Stout was struggling to describe how Kingsdown Beach looked as Ederle swam toward it. According to records, it was dark and there were bonfires on the shore, flares in the sky and searchlights scanning the water.
However, Stout was unclear whether Ederle even saw these details since she might have been too exhausted to care. Then in an interview, he found the heroine had answered the question herself. She said that when she first lifted her goggles, it reminded her of a fairy tale.
When Stout came to the book's crucial scene — Ederle hearing a voice urging her to quit, and her asking "What for?" — he considered writing a dramatic line: "Come out, girl, come out of the water". But he ultimately left it as simply "a voice", one that symbolized how the world then regarded a young woman challenging expectations.
He also points out that every source agrees on her actual response, "What for?" — a question that, for many readers, is what makes the moment truly powerful.
In 2022, the book's original version was published and then adapted into a Disney film.
When asked by the screenwriter and producer Jeff Nathanson which element of the story had to be preserved in order to best understand Ederle, Stout said that it was her relationship with her sister and her family.
"It is through that relationship that we are allowed to see Trudy grow and change from a young and very vulnerable girl to a very strong, determined and confident young woman," he said.
