Gerhard Pohle fell in love with the water when he was a child. His parents travelled widely, and he spent his formative years in Indonesia, Madagascar, and India, along with his native Germany. Snorkeling in tropical waters left the little boy with a fascination for marine life-an undertow that would keep pulling him back towards the sea.

This water-loving child-who had only occasionally seen the inside of a classroom-would eventually earn a doctorate and become a marine biologist, but it would be far from easy. The journey would take another twenty years and cross five different continents. It would pit him against everything from an education system determined to discard him to a raging civil war. Rejections, heartbreaks, family crises, and his own crumbling self-esteem would test his resilience, but that resilience would never run dry for long.

An unvarnished inspirational coming-of-age story about travel and family, about love, friendship, and loneliness, about being dismissed as "not worth teaching," and about learning anyway-despite everything life throws at you.