Before the Wind: A novel

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