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.