At the age of 15 Rebecca Ridgway wanted to do something amazing. The chance came nine years later in January 1992 when she was the first woman to paddle a kayak right around Cape Horn Island. This foray into one of the world's most notorious waterway forms the climax of the book. A daughter of Atlantic rower and round-the-world yachtsman John Ridgway, her upbringing has not been conventional and not without challenges. Rebecca was an only child, reared on the galeswept Ardmore peninsula 20 miles south of Cape Wrath, Scotland's top left hand corner. Access is by sea, as there are still no roads to Ardmore. For most of her childhood there was no electricity. Milk is powdered, the Rayburn peat-fired. She tells of growing up in this former crofting community which in summer becomes frenzied with the activities of her parents' Adventure School. She tells too of the winter expeditions with her parents, to the head waters of the Amazon on which the Ridgways braved Shining Path terrorist country to discovery and bring back to Scotland the daughter of a murdered friend.