Before the Wind

February 8, 2016
Josh Johannssen, the protagonist of this enjoyable, low-key novel, has sailing in his blood. His grandfather and father are both designers and builders of sailboats. His younger sister, Ruby, scotched a promising career in sailing and now does aid work in Africa. His older brother, Bernard, took to sea and has been away for 12 years. At 31, Josh himself runs a boat repair dock in Olympia, Wash. When Josh decides to recondition an old family boat, Freya III, it’s all hands on deck as every member of the Johannssen clan commits to taking part in the annual Swiftsure International Yacht Race. In the days leading up to this event, and during the race itself, Josh and his family will rehash old hurts, and shocking revelations come to light. Traveling back and forth over the history of the Johannssens, the author writes both humorously and movingly about one family’s lifelong love of sailing. For those who love a good sea story, this novel will be as bracing as salt spray during an autumn sail.

Starred review from February 15, 2016
A cautionary tale of obsession and what it can cost tells of three generations whose devotion to sailing holds them together until it sunders them. Through the first-person voice of middle son Josh and smooth tacking between the present and past, Lynch (Truth Like the Sun, 2012, etc.) charts the shifting fortunes of the Johannssen family. Gramps, known as Grumps, and his son, Bobo Jr., design sailboats in the Pacific Northwest, where the son is a racing legend. His wife, a physics teacher, explains the science of wind and water to their three children, while he bullies them into mastering everything else from stem to stern. The eldest, Bernard, and Josh become accomplished sailors, but little sister Ruby is possessed of marine magic. When she inexplicably scuttles her chances for a spot in the Olympics, however, it's clear there are cracks in the Johannssen crew. Ruby will abandon sailing for volunteer work on a hospital ship off Africa; Bernard heads out to sea solo and a gypsy life partly supported by illegal butterfly sales. The Bobos run their boat business into trouble, and Mom emerges from a decade of work on a 150-year-old math riddle unsure if she should submit her solution. Josh remains close to home, working in a boatyard and living in a marina on one of his family's designs. No longer a competitive sailor, he still keeps a mental log of the Johannssens' past glories and recent struggles. The book's present concerns his eccentric co-workers and neighbors, including one named Noah who provides comic counterpoint on familial harmony in the animal kingdom with a Morgan Freeman imitation and quotes from the voice-over of March of the Penguins. Josh's marina life and computer dates offer glimpses of an alternative family amid his father's push to bring the clan together for one last race. Lynch dissects an uncommon family with, after all, more than one thing in common in a highly readable tale.

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Starred review from April 15, 2016
There are so many ways to disappoint your family. Thirtysomething Josh Johannssen, the middle child in a Seattle clan obsessed with sailing, feels like he's been guilty of most of them. Like his brother and sister, he has abandoned his father and grandfather's legendary boat-building business, but he's also disappointed his physics-obsessed mother, who once saw in Josh a fellow scientist. His siblings have gone even farther afield: his sister, Ruby, the best sailor of them all, volunteering in Africa, and his older brother, Bernard, riding the waves as a modern-day pirate. But, perhaps, if Josh can mend a classic racing boat built by his father and enter the craft in Swiftsure, the biggest sailboat race in the area, there is a chance to tug the family back together again, at least for a weekend. Many readers of literary fiction might look askance at a novel hinged on a sailboat race, wondering, like one of Josh's buddies at the marina where they work, How can you get so amped up about going slightly faster than somebody else when you're both going so fucking slow? That would be a mistake akin to dismissing Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion because it's about logging. That novel and this one are about the tidal push and pull of families. Still, don't ignore the boats. Lynch writes about the science of sailing and the grandeur of Puget Sound with a Melville-like attention to detail, but in the very concreteness of those details a kind of poetry emerges that speaks of the transience of life in all its terrible beauty and exhilarating terror.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2016

Joshua Johannssen is the middle child in a volatile and eccentric family of boat builders and sailors. His father and grandfather (Bobo Senior and Bobo Junior) run a business designing sailboats; his mother is an astronomer who interjects cosmic theories and philosophies into the family's doings. Josh's younger sister Ruby seems to have mystical powers in several areas, including sailing, and after she deliberately throws an important race, the family scatters. Ruby gets involved in humanitarian work while eldest brother Bernard becomes a political radical and eventually a smuggler. Bobo Jr. browbeats Josh into retrofitting a sailboat for an upcoming race and hopes to reunite the family for the event. VERDICT Lynch (Truth Like the Sun) packs a lot of detail into his narrative. In the first few chapters, the reader is introduced to the family dynamics and backstory, a primer on sailing terminology, and the personalities and foibles of the characters who populate the boatyard where Josh works and the marina where he lives. It's a bit much to keep track of, but readers will be pulled along by the dry humor and genuine humanity of the narrative, and by the end everything falls into place without feeling contrived. [See Prepub Alert, 10/12/15.]--Christine DeZelar-Tiedman, Univ. of Minnesota Libs., Minneapolis

Copyright 2016 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2015

Lynch has won some nice honors, e.g., the Indies Choice Honor Book Award, plus appreciative reviews in venues like the New York Times; Border Songs is a personal favorite. Now it's breakout time. The Johannssens are a great sailing family living near Puget Sound. But while 31-year-old Josh devotes himself to sailboat repair, siblings Ruby and Bernard have made big waves by moving far away. The family reunites, however, to sail a historic, family-built vessel in a key race.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.