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	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Sebastian Ritscher
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BEFORE THE WIND

Jim Lynch

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.

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Book Published 2016-04-19 by Knopf

Comments

Jim Lynch's Before the Wind is such a wonderful novel—so wry, wise and engaging, so sleek and descriptive—I already have a spot picked out for it on my bookshelf, next to those other classic stories of iconoclastic Western families, Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion and Duncan's The Brothers K.

I was born and raised at the mouth of the ocean and watched boats come and go my whole young life. Jim Lynch’s Before the Wind brings me back to those shores as his song of a novel sings of both the ease and magic of the perfect sailing dray and the near impossibility of surviving the worst one.

Before the Wind will enthrall the mariner in all of us—our mystical connection with the sea and the irresistible appeal of competition against wind and waves and one another. It is also a story about the complexity of family—alienation, estrangement and sibling rivalry, and the healing power of humour, loyalty and love.

I never expected to be captivated by the world of sailing the way I was with Before the Wind. From the first paragraph I was hooked by Jim Lynch’s language, his humor, his wisdom. The characters are marvelous; the storytelling confident and rollicking; the whole book a delight and a surprise.

A beautifully rendered tale of family and friendship, of souls caught on the wind, of birds that think they're fish and sailors who yearn for the shore. It's a story that will stay with you long after it's done, like the spreading wake of a boat passing at dusk.