A nine-year account of the lives of the “anchor-outs”—an unhoused community living off the California coast on abandoned boats—that explores the struggles and resilience of those surviving on the fringes of society.
Lost at Sea sometimes gets mired in the details of local politics, which can be challenging for an outsider to follow. Still, Kloc’s sensitive book is a testament to the many ways that people care for one another, however imperfectly, and a record of the sustaining power of community.
The author eats, drinks, and shares stories but resists the traps of condescension and false familiarity as he paints a portrait of inequities of “Chinatown”-like proportions that date back to the Gold Rush ... However convivial, the largely white anchor-outs represent an unrepresentative sample, in keeping with Marin County’s history of de facto segregation, relegating Black shipbuilders in World War II to Marin City ... But the book fulfills the author’s purpose of documenting this community ... This magisterial but unsentimental journey reminds us of what else has been lost at sea.
