Jim Lynch’s Olympia-set novel ‘The Highest Tide’ comes home as a play at Harlequin
More than a decade after its publication, Olympia author Jim Lynch’s “The Highest Tide” is still rising.
An adaptation of “Tide,” a coming-of-age story about a boy fascinated with the creatures living in Puget Sound, opens Friday at Harlequin Productions’ State Theater, and the 2005 bestseller continues to attract attention from critics, the media and the film industry.
“ ‘The Highest Tide’ lives on,” Lynch told The Olympian. “It’s like if I had four kids” — his four novels — “and it’s the precocious first kid who keeps surprising me.”
Of course, the book has a particular resonance in the city where it’s set, and that’s part of the reason Harlequin Productions’ artistic director Aaron Lamb chose to produce it.
“Jim Lynch’s work here speaks to us differently, because we know Puget Sound,” Lamb wrote in his director’s notes for the show. “We know Buzz’s Bar and Grill and the Fourth Avenue Bridge. We know The Brotherhood. We know KING 5 and Ramtha. We know the streets of downtown Olympia.”
“Tide” centers on 13-year-old Miles — a role shared by cousins Jack Brotherton and Leo Conklin, both 13 and students at Washington Middle School in Olympia — and Miles’ investigations into the mysteries beneath the water and the mysteries of adolescence.
“Jim has written a story that is as much a textbook for the fragile ecology of the sound and its marine life as it is a fable of a young teenager’s often confused and painful journey (to) adulthood,” wrote Jane Jones, who adapted the book for a 2009 production at Seattle’s Book-It Repertory Theatre.
That duality, encapsulated by the title’s reference to rising sea levels, perhaps explains the novel’s continuing international popularity.
Last year, the Sierra Club included it on a list of a dozen climate fiction (or “cli-fi”) books for young adults, quoting a scene in which Miles tells a reporter, “Maybe the earth is trying to tell us something.”
In the fall, Portland’s infamous Powell’s Books included “Tide” on its list of “25 Books to Read Before You Die: Pacific Northwest Edition,” noting that the book has become more and more relevant.
Lynch didn’t intend the book as a story about climate change, he said, nor did he think of it as specifically a young-adult book. “I was coming at it from the vantage of having a kid understand what’s going on in the world more than the adults all around him do,” he said. “The climate crisis wasn’t foremost in my mind, but looking back, I see it was kind of about the changes that were underfoot.”
The Harlequin production has given Lynch an opportunity to revisit the book.
“I turned in ‘The Highest Tide’ 16 years ago and haven’t read it since I turned it in,” he said. “At the first read-through, I was surprised by the things that I’d forgotten.
“You feel awkward laughing at your own jokes,” he added.
The book has been translated into at least 10 languages, and a new French translation — with its cover dominated by a giant squid rising from the water — was nominated for an award last year.
And it’s once again been optioned for a screenplay. “This is the third time,” Lynch said. “These things don’t usually pan out in my experience. … But it’s a sign that there’s still interest.”
The author himself is still interested, too. He’s started imagining a sequel in which a 20-something Miles is researching whales. “I’ve gotten fascinated with whales,” he said.
‘The Highest Tide’
- What: Harlequin Productions presents Jane Jones’ adaptation of Jim Lynch’s best-selling coming-of-age tale about a 13-year-old boy who’s fascinated by creatures living in Puget Sound.
- When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday plus March 5-7, 12-14 and 19-21, with matinees at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday plus March 7, 8, 14, 15 and 21
- Where: State Theater, 202 Fourth Ave. E., Olympia
- Tickets: $36, $34 for seniors and military, $20 for students and youth. For the 2 p.m. March 7 performance and the March 12 and 19 performances, pay what you choose.
- More information: 360-786-0151, harlequinproductions.org