An Exiting and Hilarious Treasure Hunt

I was surprised with how much I enjoyed “Women Can Find Shipwrecks Too.” I sat down to read it, absolutely exhausted. Figured I would read a chapter or two. I read the entire book in one sitting and stayed up all night reading it. Growing up my brother and I were so fascinated with the Atocha. Living between the islands and the Treasure Coast of Florida we dragged our parents everywhere, wanting to learn more about the Atocha, shipwrecks, and of course treasure. It was so refreshing to read and hear another treasure hunter/finder’s perspective, story, and wrecks. 

Margaret Brandeis does a fabulous job narrating the ups and downs in her treasure hunting career with some laugh out loud humour. Her accounts are in such great detail and her characters descriptions so spot on that you can picture this story so clearly. I was nervous, at the beginning, because there were so many people we met so quickly. However, Brandeis does a fantastic job of rejogging your memory if a person does reappear; and many of them do. 

For much of the story, I kept wanting to bang my head against the wall every time Brandeis trusted another person. Though her trust does leads her to finding her treasure, in the end. The story does keep you at the edge of your seat. Several times I kept thinking, today is the day the crew will find the shipwreck and treasure that they have been searching for all these years. Much of this tale is about perseverance. Brandeis did what was considered a man’s job, and throughout much of the book, had to hold her own against several men.  There is even a man, who would not negotiate or make a deal with her because she was a woman. A man had to negotiate the deal in her place. She had to fight her way through small country bureaucracy that probably has not changed much in the years since. 

I am very curious to find out, of the technologies that were used during Brandeis’s treasure hunts, how many of those technologies still exist or have contributed to technology that is now used. I am also curious how the treasure hunting/finding game has changed since the end of the book. The authour also leaves us wondering what she ended up doing with the rest of her life: treasure hunting, ranch life, or a little of both?

Overall, this book was a fantastic, easy, quick, exciting, and educational read. I love reading about women who pioneered in their fields for women in the future. I was expecting to find it education, but I enjoyed it much more than I thought I would. 

I did receive a copy of this book for review in a giveaway. All opinions are 100% my own.