In a new memoir, Marilyn Moss Rockefeller brings readers along for the ride to witness what she calls a “well-lived” life that saw her use smarts and spunk to rise from an improvised youth in the mountains of West Virginia to lead an iconic Maine company. 

According to Islandport Press, in a news release, Mountain Girl: From Barefoot to Boardroom, set for release in November, is a fast-paced chronicle of Rockefeller’s life that mixes adventure – she was at the famous 1966 24 Hours of Le Mans and was friends with legendary automobile designer Carroll Shelby – and struggle – she worked through a difficult and combative marriage as she desperately worked to save the tent company she helped found.

In praising the memoir, author Richard Blanco said: “Mountain Girl is [Rockefeller’s] unassuming journey made epic by her capacity to find faith in her doubts; to own her struggles and triumphs; to be tenacious yet carefree; to crave adventure as well as stability; to ultimately say yes, yes, yes to all those moments—big and small—which make a life to alive.”

Rockefeller was born in the mountains of West Virginia where she was raised in part by her beloved grandparents. She moved north, following the death of her father, where her ambitious mother transformed her from the feisty, tree-climbing MarilynRae into the more proper Marilyn – a journey that came with some regret for the young girl. She graduated from high school in Connecticut and later moved to Michigan where she met and married designer Bill Moss. The duo, with two children in tow, eventually made their way east where they would start Moss Tents on the coast of Maine.

She sold the company in the early 2000s. Following divorce from Bill Moss, she married James S. Rockefeller Jr. The two still live in Camden.