Before the Wind

From the author of The Highest Tide, Border Songs and Truth Like the Sun, his long-awaited breakthrough--a grand saga of a sailing-obsessed family that will stand alongside Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion.

Joshua Johannssen has spent all of his thirty-one years among sailboats. His grandfather designed them, his father built and raced them, his mother knows why and how they work (or not). For Josh and his two siblings, their backyard was the Puget Sound and sailing their DNA. But both his sister and brother fled many years ago: Ruby to Africa and elsewhere to do good works on land, and Bernard to god-knows-where at sea, a fugitive and pirate. Now pushing thirty, Josh--who repairs boats of all kinds in a Steinbeckian marina south of Seattle--is still pained by whatever it was that went wrong with his damn family. But when the Johannssens unexpectedly reunite for the most important race in these waters--all of them together on a historic vessel they made decades ago--they will be carried to destinies both individual and collective, and to a heart-shattering revelation. Past and present merge seamlessly and collide surprisingly as Jim Lynch reveals a family unlike any other with the grace and humor and magic of a master storyteller.

JIM LYNCH lives with his wife in Olympia, Washington. His novels The Highest Tide, Border Songs, and Truth Like the Sun have been adapted for the stage in Seattle.