Additional Comments From Margaret Eiluned Morgan on the Variety of Readers Who Enjoy "Gift from the Sea":

The book’s message is a remarkably enduring one and attracts readers across a wide range of interests: nature, spirituality, biography, women’s writing, beach and seashore, Florida writers, etc. A wide variety of readers respond to it: girls as young as 10 enjoy it; often it is given as graduation gift or coming of age gift to girls (sometimes as a family tradition from one generation to the next); Buddhists read it as an inspirational text as well as many church groups; caregivers, hospital workers, therapists and many under stress find it useful for balancing their own stressful lives; vacationers to Florida and other beaches read it as a "beach book"; it is read at weddings, funerals, birthdays, and graduation ceremonies.

Excerpts from 50th Anniversary Edition Introduction by Reeve Lindbergh:

"Her book offers its readers, finally an extraordinary kind of freedom, and I think this is the reason it continues to be so well loved, and so well read, after all these years. I am talking about the freedom that comes when one chooses to remain open, as my mother did again and again, to life itself, whatever it may bring: joys, sorrows, triumphs, failures, suffering, comfort, and above all, always, change."

"At whatever point one opens GIFT FROM THE SEA, to any chapter or page, the author's words offer a chance to breathe and to live more slowly. The book makes it possible to quiet down and rest in the present, no matter what the circumstances may be. Just to read it -- a little of it or in its entirety -- is to exist for a while in a different and more peaceful tempo."