Local author Jim Lynch includes Olympia setting in new book

“It’s the water.”

The Olympia Beer slogan also applies to novelist Jim Lynch’s relationship with Olympia, and to the city’s role in his new novel, “Before the Wind,” due out Tuesday. Lynch will talk about the book, which tells the story of a family as obsessed with sailing as Lynch’s own, Thursday at the Olympia Timberland Regional Library.

“Before the Wind” is set in Puget Sound, with main character Josh Johannssen repairing boats at an Olympia marina. Lynch, who moved here in 1998, has spent a lot of time in Olympia’s boating subculture.

“To me, Olympia is about the water,” he said in an interview last week. “That’s the most dazzling aspect of it for me. We have all these inlets, and we have the most dramatic tidal swings of anywhere in Puget Sound.

“It’s still a quiet water wonderland down here, without ferryboats and freighters.”

Of Lynch’s four novels, the two set in Olympia are about the water. His first, “The Highest Tide,” is a coming-of-age tale about a boy who loves the mud flats. “Border Songs” examines life in a town divided by the border between the United States and Canada, and “Truth Like the Sun” moves between a more-or-less contemporary Seattle and the city as it was at the time of 1962 World’s Fair.

While “Songs” is about a town and “Truth” about a city and its history, “Tide” and “Wind” feel more personal. For his water works, Lynch used first-person narrators, making them feel, at least, closer to his heart.

“I love all my children equally,” he said. “That’s my usual answer, but I do feel like I’ve been preparing to write this one for most of my life, and it is probably closest to my heart in many ways of the books I’ve tried to write.”

Indeed, “Before the Wind” covers territory Lynch knows well — not just Olympia and the Puget Sound (he grew up in Seattle, another of the book’s locations), but sailing and life on the water.

He was stalled writing the book, in fact, until he bought himself a sailboat and began writing aboard it.

“I used to walk the docks with my father just admiring sailboats,” Lynch said. “He taught me taste, what is a beautiful sailboat. He kind of shoved sailing down my throat — for the whole family — but I always kind of ate it up.

“Now he’s coming up on his 90th birthday, and I’m hoping to take him sailing for a day. It’s come full circle.”

Despite the similarities between the two families — sailing-obsessed father, science teacher mother and more — the Lynches are not the Johannssens, he said. Yet after growing up sailing Puget Sound, it just felt natural to set a story about family on its waters.

“I felt that if I wrote about sailing well enough, sailing could work as a microcosm for life,” he said.

The book’s early reviews have been glowing, with some comparing it to Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It” and John Steinbeck’s “Cannery Row.”

“Lynch has won some nice honors — e.g., the Indies Choice Honor Book Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award — plus appreciative reviews in venues like the New York Times and the Daily Beast,” Barbara Hoffert wrote in Library Journal. “Now it’s breakout time.”

Lynch, a former investigative reporter, said he doesn’t think much about sales, but he’ll be traveling around the country publicizing the book.

“I just do what I’m asked,” he said. “I’ve been lucky so far to be able to continue to do it. It’s been 12 years now of just writing fiction.”

And he has a film agent interested in the book.

Olympia playwright Bryan Willis, who adapted “Border Songs” for a production at Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theatre, is working on a screenplay.

“That is my dream, that it could be made into a movie adapted by Bryan Willis,” Lynch said. “I realize that it’s a long shot. That’s the nature of the movie business.”

This story was originally published April 13, 2016 at 8:29 PM with the headline "Local author Jim Lynch includes Olympia setting in new book."