In Beyond This Harbor: Adventurous Tales of the Heart, poet and activist Rose Styron (Fierce Day) writes that her U.S. diplomat friend Bill Luers "often said my middle name should have been 'Ubiquitous.' " "Ubiquitous" would be an understatement. Styron's ebullient memoir is chockablock with stories of her globe-trotting exploits throughout a long life well lived. The book starts like a shot, with Styron's account of undertaking risky human rights work in Chile for Amnesty International in the mid-1970s, and then it settles into a straightforward chronology. Born Rose Burgunder in 1928, Styron grew up in Baltimore in a well-to-do, nonobservant Jewish household. After earning a master's degree in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University, she headed to Rome to write. There she became involved with novelist William Styron (1925-2006), to whom she was married for 53 years.
Rose admits that in her absence, her travel-averse husband suffered, as did her writing: "I became obsessed with helping to change antihuman policies abroad. I stopped writing poetry. For twenty years." Beyond This Harbor nimbly hops from hair-raising chronicles of political intrigue to photo-rich sections dedicated to the Styrons' adventures with their formidable East Coast friends, among them "Teddy" (Kennedy), "Lil" (Hellman), "Jimmy" (Baldwin), "Lenny" (Bernstein), and, of course, Bill and Hillary. Rose devotes only two chapters to William Styron's mythic mental health battles, which is fitting: while Rose Styron is the upholder of her husband's legacy (she edited Selected Letters of William Styron), she has always been, as Beyond This Harbor certifies, her own person. --Nell Beram, author and freelance writer