The Mermaid Handbook by Carolyn Turgeon

Author:Carolyn Turgeon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-03-23T04:00:00+00:00

A still from A Daughter of the Gods, 1916.

LOC/Alamy Stock Photo

Annette Kellerman learned to swim as a small child in Sydney for a mermaidy reason: her legs were bowed, she couldn’t stand upright, and, after being diagnosed with rickets, she’d had to wear heavy, painful iron braces on her legs from the time she was two to seven years old. To escape the pain, she would lose herself in the fairy-tale books she loved. When her braces finally came off, the seven-year-old Kellerman was still too weak to walk properly, and the family’s doctor prescribed swimming as a cure. Her transformation was miraculous: in the water, she was strong and ferocious, even magical. “Only a cripple can understand the intense joy I experienced,” she wrote later. “After I learned, I’d go swimming anywhere, anytime.” She trained at the same pool as Snowy Baker, one of the best divers in the country and future coach to Johnny Weissmuller, whom he’d teach to dive and swing through the trees as Tarzan. Kellerman quickly mastered diving as well. Having worked hard for her strong body, she became fearless.

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