Hippie Chick by Joseph Monniger

Lolly is used to taking her sail boat out into the bay by herself, but when her boat founders and she is soon seperated from it. Just when she thought it was over for her she is rescued by a manatee and taken to a warm spring in a mangrove island. She was able to warm up and eat some vegetation. Her hippie mother and friends are frantically searching for her but they are following the currents never knowing the manatee took her in the opposite direction. She isn't missing for long though, on the second day she swims with her manatee once more out into the ocean where a helicopter spots her. When the rescuers spot the manatees they carefully rescues her with out scaring them away. But unfortunately a Miami news crew boat sliced into her rescuing manatee. This fictional book was designed as the book she wrote a couple of years after the incident to sell after she went on talk shows, and her story was optioned by a movie studio. I had expected the living with the manatees part of her story to be longer but in general it is a quick read that is definitely a book about the plight of the manatees. Good but I just don't see this as a TU.