WANDERER

Fourteen years ago when it was first published Wanderer startled the reading world. Here was no simple narrative of a sea voyage and here was the antithesis of a self-serving Hollywood memoir. Sterling Hayden was at the peak of his earning power as a star when he suddenly quit. He walked out on Hollywood walked out of a shattered marriage defied the courts and broke and an outlaw set sail with his four children in the schooner Wanderer--bound for the South Seas. Long before he was an actor Hayden was a seaman. He had sailed before the mast and as mate and captain in sailing ships. He had been a Grand Banks fisherman. Then Hollywood offered him a screen test. Pushed to stardom he became the leading man to one of the screens most beautiful women and the money began to flow. With money and fame however came a gnawing dissatisfaction with his life. His attempt to escape launches this autobiography. It is the candid sometimes painfully revealing confession of a man who scrutinizes his every self-defeat and self-betrayal in the unblinking light of conscience. It is also the triumph of a complex and contradictory man still a rebel and a seeker undefeated by his failure to find himself in love adventure drink or escape to the South Seas. It is as Eugene Burdick said of it "utterly fascinating written by a man who has been able to achieve an honesty about himself which is almost unique."