Margie Winslow
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Margaret Winslow
Author,
Geologist, Professor,
​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 tragic 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.
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Similar to Ann Cleeves’s Shetland series and Peter May’s Hebrides novels, an insular community in a harsh environment with long-kept secrets and conflicting loyalties confound efforts to solve a violent death.
In March, 2026, Cradle of Storms was shortlisted for the Historical Novel Society’s contest for an unpublished historical mystery.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 90,000 words
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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SMART ASS: How a Donkey Challenged Me to Accept His True Nature and Rediscover My Own (New World Library, 2018) recounts my unexpected journey with Caleb, a 700-pound white Andalusian donkey, who wreaks havoc wherever he goes. It combines the humorous misadventures such as those found in Marley and Me with the sometimes poignant insights and difficult decisions Jon Katz faced in A Good Dog.
The memoir explores why an overworked college professor in New York adopted a donkey in mid-life – and how I swiftly found myself in over my head. The book chronicles my stormy attempts to tame Caleb and control his rebellious spirit. Acting as both mirror and foil, Caleb repeatedly confounds my expectations, humiliates me in public, and at one point, threatens my life. Yet in spite of it all, we form a bond that surprises me with its depth and meaning. In the end, my free-spirited donkey teaches me life-changing lessons and challenges me to keep faith with my own true nature.
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