Margie Winslow
Margaret A Winslow
Author,
Geologist, Professor
Guanaco
La Paciencia
Tierra del Fuego
Chile
Cradle of Storms
Historical Mystery Novel
On the trail of the killer of a murdered Japanese tourist, a new teacher on Unalaska Island, Alaska unearths a story of forbidden love and sacrifice during WW II and its bittersweet consequences fifty years later. Recounted using two timelines: wartime (1942-45) and 1992, the plot is based on the little-known Japanese invasion of the western Aleutian Islands in 1942, the forced evacuation of Aleut villages, and the US government’s indifference and faulty record keeping that doomed forty-four civilians on Attu Island.
Cradle of Storms will appeal to readers of Ann Cleeves’ Shetland series and Peter May’s Hebrides novels, where a insular communities in harsh environments with long-kept secrets and conflicting loyalties confound efforts to solve violent deaths.
Readers of Kristin Harmel, Kristin Hannah, and Kate Quinn will enjoy the exploration of family in wartime and the fateful choices people must make to survive.
In March, 2026, Cradle of Storms was shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society’s contest for an unpublished historical mystery. An earlier version of Cradle of Storms was shortlisted for the 2023 Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger award. Complete at 82,000 words
How do you meet a mid-life crisis?
An overworked college professor in New York City, answered a for-sale ad for a “Large White Saddle Donkey” in the American Donkey and Mule Society’s magazine, The Brayer.
Hilarity ensues, alongside life-threatening injuries and spirit-enriching insight. Through training traumas, expert-baffling antics, and humiliating races, she comes to understand of Caleb’s true, undeniable gifts: a willingness to be true to himself no matter the circumstances, to “speak truth to power,” to trust, and to forgive. As she and Caleb learn to thrive, you’ll learn the importance of being true to your own pure and powerful self.
"This unusual, engaging story of a woman and her donkey will undoubtedly win many hearts."
— Publishers Weekly
“I love Margaret Winslow’s book and all it teaches us about the true nature of life, from the power of love to the reality of animal communication.”
— Dr. Bernie S. Siegel, author of Love, Animals & Miracles and 365 Prescriptions for the Soul
“Heartbreaking, funny, encouraging, and enlightening, Smart Ass is a beautifully written story that questions our own stubbornness as a species and asks us to learn how to trust ourselves.”
— Ben Hart, animal behaviorist and trainer at Hart’s Horsemanship and The Donkey Sanctuary
Over My Head: Journeys in Leaky Boats from the Strait of Magellan to Cape Horn and Beyond is a travel memoir that captures the misadventures of an inexperienced geologist as she begins pioneering field research in southern South America.
Making waves in two repressive cultures, the author was one of the first women to work in the male-dominated world of field geology and the only woman on US and Chilean ships working in Tierra del Fuego and Antarctica. The author’s voyages, beginning in the mid-1970’s, re-trace segments of Darwin’s and Magellan’s historic journeys into the uncharted fjords and trackless forests of Tierra del Fuego.
From the first scene, where she clings to a ledge alone as the tide rises over her boot tops, to her near-death experiences with killer whales, a collapsing glacier, and foundering ships, these experiences trace the author’s evolution from an ill-prepared beginner to a competent leader.
In search of the rocks and archaeological sites that might unravel Tierra del Fuego’s tortured natural and social history, the author finds that she must re-draw not only the primitive geologic map of the islands but is forced to follow her own inner compass to survive.
The Cusp of Dreadfulness is the sequel to Margaret Winslow’s award-winning travel adventure memoir, Over My Head. In it the author struggles for acceptance as a female field scientist while navigating through the wilderness of southern South America. Unlike her first book about sea voyages along the coasts during the 1970s, this memoir focuses on her land-based adventures between 1974 and 1998 carrying nothing more than her backpack, a hammer, and a compass. During fifteen seasons spread over thirty years, she recounts how she became lost while crossing the Andes on foot, was arrested and interrogated by the Argentine Navy, had a close brush with death on a flight over the Strait of Magellan, and rescued an injured child at an isolated farm. Her fascinating narrative includes the frightening details of an assault by a fisherman that hurled the previously intrepid traveler into a state of intense agoraphobia that she had to overcome if she was to survive and return to the wilderness.
The Cusp of Dreadfulness has just been named a finalist in the Foreword Reviews Indies competition.
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