'Fascinating, spellbinding, erudite and great fun - every page made me want to walk out the door and go look at the Irish Sea.'
- Roddy Doyle
'As full of life and vitality as the sea itself.'
- Nicholas Crane, author of The Making of the British Landscape
'The Irish Sea has found her bard. This is a dazzle of storytelling, an enthralling trove of history and a joyful work of travel and reportage, singing with the love of the sea. The Turning Tide is a spell book written by a scholar of the deep archives, a naturalist, a time-traveller, a wizard who knows the colours of the winds. Nobody can tell a tale like Jon Gower.'
- Horatio Clare, author of Down To The Sea In Ships
'Contagious with delight and fascination, this book has brought new understanding and significance to a patch of water I'm by, on, or in most days of my life. The seeming informality, the twinkle-in-the-eye in the telling, the gentle provocation make it a joy to read. More like sitting back to listen. Jon's perhaps brought into a being a new class of book, for it's nothing if not a "Racontography."'
- Cynan Jones, author of Stillicide
'In prose as glittering as the ocean itself, Gower unearths the saints and smugglers, the birds and bards that have inhabited this salty kingdom, and weaves together stories of his own life in the main with their legends and tales. In The Turning Tide, the Irish Sea roars with a unique passion and character.'
- Mike Parker, author of All the Wide Border
'An elegant, engrossing portrait of the turbulent Irish Sea. Bursting with detailed natural history and stories of conquest, love, tragedy, and poetry alike, Jon Gower has given us a history worthy of the deep waters he describes - one so teeming with life, you can't stop reading.'
- Bathsheba Demuth, author of Floating Coast