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Secrets of the olive revealed

Having rowed across the Atlantic ocean, Julie Angus and her husband have now sailed from Spain to the Middle East--with a baby that wouldn't sleep--to investigate the history of the olive.

March 27th, 2014

In her forthcoming new book Olive Odyssey: Searching for the Secrets of the Fruit That Seduced the World (Greystone $28.95), Julie Angus describes, among other things, finding the oldest olive tree in the world, in Corsica.


Julie Angus

Julie Angus

While collecting DNA samples from olive trees in an effort to determine where the first olive tree originated, Julie Angus and her family followed the route of ancient Phoenicians. There was, of course, along the way, some obligatory investigative feasting on inky black tapenades and chicken drizzled with green-gold oil in Cassis. She describes how and why oil became an important commodity and she shares her Mediterranean experiences, from witnessing olive harvesting in Greece to using a blond toddler as a fail-safe ambassador everywhere they went.

Julie Angus of Courtenay has two bachelor’s degrees, in psychology and biology, and a master’s degree in molecular biology from the University of Victoria. She has written for a variety of publications. Following her 145-day Atlantic crossing by rowboat, from Portugal to Costa Rica, described in Rowboat in a Hurricane: My Amazing Journey Across a Changing Atlantic Ocean (Greystone 2008), during which she and her partner were hit by four cyclones, including two hurricanes, she received the National Geographic‘s Adventurer of the Year Award.

978-1-55365-514-5; Ebook: 9781771000062

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