The Stranger in the Lifeboat by Mitch Albom Read Free Book Online

yeah . . .
    Even the Lord joined in, although he didn’t seem to know the words. Little Alice watched as if she’d never seen such a thing before. Our voices dissipated into the empty ocean night, and at that moment it was possible to believe we were the only people left on Earth.

News
    ANCHOR: As stunned families around the globe hold memorial services for their loved ones, we begin a series of tributes to those who were lost in the sinking of the Galaxy yacht last month. Tonight, Tyler Brewer profiles a remarkable woman who rose from abject poverty to one of the most powerful positions in her industry.
    REPORTER: Thank you, Jim. Latha Laghari was born in the Basanti slums of Calcutta, India. She lived her early years in a cramped shack made of wood and tin. There was no electricity and no running water. She ate once a day.
    When her parents died in a cyclone, Latha was taken in by a relative who sent her to boarding school. She excelled at chemistry and upon graduation was hoping to study medicine, but no scholarships were available to a woman of her background. Instead, she worked for two years at a meat-packing factory to save enough money to travel to Australia, where she found a job in cosmetics production.
    Latha’s chemistry background and tireless work ethic saw her rise from a product tester to chief development officer at Tovlor, Australia’s largest cosmetics company. In 1989, sheleft to start her own business back in India, which grew into one of the top twenty cosmetics firms in the world, and which now makes the popular Smackers lipstick line.
    Interestingly, Latha Laghari wore very little makeup herself. Known as an elegant, no-nonsense businesswoman, she raised two sons with her husband, Dev Bhatt, who made his fortune in the cell phone communications field.
    DEV BHATT: “Latha was the rock of our family. As firm as she could be in business, she was gentle and loving to our children. She always made time for them, and for me. She said our family was the gift she was given for the family she lost as a child.”
    REPORTER: Latha Laghari was seventy-one years old when she was invited onto Jason Lambert’s yacht for the star-crossed Grand Idea voyage. She leaves behind a grieving family, a Fortune 500 company, and a Center for Women’s Education that she created in Calcutta. In an interview, Laghari once said that, for all the schooling she experienced later in life, her first six years in the Basanti slums taught her the most important life lesson. When asked what that was, she said: “Survive until tomorrow.”

Sea
    Day nine, Annabelle. It is dark, and I am very tired. I tried twice to write you but failed. I am still in shock from earlier today. Death has struck again.
    I was resting in the back of the raft when Geri crawled over on her knees. “As long as you have that notebook, Benji,” she said, “why don’t you make an inventory? We need to keep tight track of our rations.”
    I nodded OK. Then she turned and asked everyone to bring what we had and lay it out in the middle of the raft. Before long, we were staring at the meager spread of our possessions.
    For water, we had only half a can left.
    For food, we had three protein bars from the ditch bag, plus items we had pulled from the ocean the night the Galaxy sank, four bags of cookies, two boxes of cornflakes, three apples, and the remnants of a box of peanut butter crackers that Geri had thrown into her backpack before jumping ship.
    For survival gear, again from the ditch bag, we had two paddles, a flashlight, a throwing line, a knife, a small pump, a bailer, a flare gun, three flares, binoculars, and repair patching kits. Also, one seasickness pill. We’d swallowed the rest in our first two days.
    Geri’s backpack added a first-aid kit, a small tube of aloe, several T-shirts and shorts, a pair of scissors, sunglasses, her little motorized fan, and a floppy hat.
    Finally, there