The Dogs of Winter [Paperback]

Kem Nunn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 1998

Jack Fletcher is hired to take pictures of a dangerous, premier mysto surf spot off the Pacific Northwest. But disaster soon strikes when an Indian boy drowns--and the men from his reservation seek vengeance .

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Kem Nunn's earlier surfing novel Tapping the Source was nominated for an American Book Award. In The Dogs of Winter, he draws again on the eternal legends and tall tales of surfers. Jack Fletcher is a pill-popping photographer on the skids who lucks into the assignment of photographing the aging surfing legend Drew Harmon and two young pros at the Heart Attacks in Northern California--an appropriately difficult-to-reach and shark-infested "mysto spot" reputed to have 30-foot waves. Not all dangers lurk in the ocean, however. The local Indians are unfriendly to outsiders and to each other; Harmon's young wife is obsessed with Indian witchcraft and a murdered local girl; and Harmon cloaks his own demons in laconic surfer-deity mystique. The hapless Fletcher and a local tribal council worker named Travis McCade desperately try to avert the curl of disaster that builds and breaks in this heavily atmospheric novel. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

"Surfers loved their stories. Big waves and outlaws. Eccentrics who had managed somehow to beat the system, to stay in the life when others moved inland and paid taxes." No one knows this better than Nunn (Pomona Queen), who, after 13 years, returns to the California surfing setting of his acclaimed first novel, Tapping the Source. Despite recent screw-ups, past-his-prime surfing photographer Fletcher is hired by a glossy surfing magazine to shoot aging master Drew Harmon and a couple of hot-shot tyros at a legendary Northern California beach dubbed Heart Attacks. The assignment is a bonehead idea from the start. Harmon?a semi-recluse who lives on an Indian reservation and pitched the photo shoot for unknown reasons?has no idea where Heart Attacks actually is. He's not entirely sane, in fact, and neither is his wife, a working witch. Also, the residents of the reservation are eager for confrontation, and murderously outsized cold-water waves (known to surfers as "dogs of winter") pound the shoreline. The novel begins to build a head of steam as an examination of how outsiders can wreak havoc on a small community. The tone changes dramatically when the surfers hit the road and are hunted by a band of Native Americans who've burnt down Harmon's home and kidnapped his wife. But this is no chase-the-gun-down thriller, and before you can say, "endless summer," the plot veers off in an even more sinister direction. Chapters alternate in perspective between those of Fletcher, Harmon's wife and a mixed-race official from the tribal council who bears the unlikely name of Travis McCade. It's hard to understand McCade's purpose in the novel since, structurally speaking, all he does is provide a sane foil for Harmon and fall for the man's wife. Fletcher serves the same functions, and more naturally. Even so, the story rides high, sped by prose as crisp as a breaking wave, as Nunn, a skilled author, once again writes deeply about a subject he knows and loves. Paperback rights to Washington Square Press; author tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 368 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First edition (March 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0671793349
• ISBN-13: 978-0671793340
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (36 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #598,376 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars No hope save hope, December 8, 2000

By 

peter wild - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Dogs of Winter (Paperback)

This is not the kind of book I would normally pick up. The title is not so great. "Dogs of Winter" sounds like a straight-to-video action flick starring Charlie Sheen.

Then you read the back cover copy.

It's about a mystical cove in California. A place surfers talk about in hushed tones. The Devil's Hoof, home to the last great wave. Nobody has ever found it, but many have searched in vain. Until now. When I read that, I thought: okay - it's a surfer version of that over-rated Alex Garland book, "The Beach".

A group made up of two young surfers, a grizzled old photographer, a legendary surfer and a young kid find the cove and decide to make something of it, which riles the local Indian population somewhat. When the kid vanishes beneath one of the great waves, the local Indian population decide to retaliate: the legendary surfer's half-mad wife is abducted and the young surfer, the old photographer and the legendary surfer disappear into the woods roundabout. At which point, it's a case of Alex Garland's "The Beach" meets - what? "Straw Dogs"? "Deliverance"?

I'll tell you. When I started reading I thought: this is a book without surprises.

I only started reading because of a conversation with a friend. We were talking about end-of-year polls, how you can often hear about books and music that passed you by, how you can often pick up a treat that otherwise you might have missed. He told me that he spotted "Dogs of Winter" in one such poll two or more years ago. He told me I should read it and - you know, you feel kind of obligated after that, right?

Recommendation notwithstanding, I approached this book like I'd approach a snake with it's back up.I'll tell you - I'll hold my hands up - I was wrong. This is not in the least like you expect it to be.

The thread of the novel primarily winds itself about three people - Fletcher (the grizzled old photographer I told you about), Kendra (the half-mad wife of the legendary surfer) and a local police guy / mediator called Travis. All of whom are in some way flawed. Fletcher used to be a great photographer but now he is relegated to weddings and drinking in the morning. Kendra has a history of insanity and worries about being her father's daughter, her father being the kind of guy who beat his wife and worked his way in and out of one institution or another. Travis used to be a hell-raiser, and has a reputation as a womaniser, but really he is a failure: two failed marriages and a kid he doesn't really know. When Travis stands out by the sea in the fog with his father, you see two versions of the same old goat.

Kem Nunn frustrates your expectations through deft deflection for the most part. Action occurs off camera. You chance upon the big plot turns after the fact - the reader is wandering about in the woods with all these other people, and you have as much chance as they do to converge upon what happens next. The convergences are not the most important parts of the story.

The weight of the book lies in the spaces between what happened before and what happens next, the still moments as characters watch the sky and regret choices (choices that shaped lives, choices that shaped the action over the previous pages).

"Dogs in Winter" is not a B-movie, straight-to-video action flick. "Dogs in Winter" is about age and the baggage you accumulate as you make your way from Point A to Point B. Towards the end of the book, Travis says:

"A man should have something . . . some thread to the earth, lest he lose even the ground beneath his feet."

That's what all of these people are looking for. (I suppose you'd call it sense: that attempt to articulate and make sense of the larger things - like the effect of the sea upon the lives of those who live by the coast - even though the larger things often refuse articulation.)

Fletcher sums this up:

"It was his hope that these things were so ordered, though there was little foundation for this hope save hope itself."

The people in the book (Hell, the people reading the book) have hopes - frustrated or otherwise - and reading that acts like a congress, part sweet part sour. It's not the kind of book that would normally have caught my eye. Sometimes it's good to know people, good to have books (and ideas and anything else) thrust into your hand, sometimes it's good to be told what to do, because otherwise you'd miss out on the things that might otherwise have passed you by.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A book about...surfers?!, May 24, 2001

By 

Richard A. Tucker "Tucker at large" (Pembroke Pines, FL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dogs of Winter (Paperback)

I read Kem Nunn's previous novel "Tapping the Source" and thoroughly enjoyed it. It wasn't "my kind of novel" but I still scarfed that book down. It also gave me a nice appreciation for the surfing mentality. I found "The Dogs of Winter" many years later and gave it a try. Kem's ability to draw me into the novel is disturbing but admirable. I can't begin to understand the motivations of the characters in the beginning, but as I continue to be drawn into the novel and its characters I find that their stories are not so different from those of real people I know. I relate to the characters on a gut level which tosses aside any differences I have with them. Before long I'm eager to see what happens regardless of the fundamental lack of shared philosophy, lifestyle or motives. Too top off the good characterization Kem Nunn has a real understanding of the environment he's writing about. From the knowledge of surfers and their mindset to the region and the climate they challenge, I really feel like I'm walking the shores of the Northern California Pacific coast. It's a scary place with its extremes in weather but also full of beautiful detail and wonder. This guy can cook. I've never had a big interest in surfing or surfers, however, just like my experience with his previous novel, by the end of this book I'm almost ready to jump on a board to try my hand in the numbingly cold waters of the north Pacific. Luckily the sharks and the huge, deep Pacific waves are there keep me out of the water. Did I mention that I cramp easily?

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The place where legends die......., July 21, 2001

By 

Tim Withee "Tim Withee" (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Dogs of Winter (Paperback)

Man, this was an astonishingly good book, that used surfing as a background to a harrowing tale of full of fear, darkness and in the end, redemption. Nunn's a great storyteller, and I barely put the book down until I finished it.

Nunn has an eye for sides of life that many among us would never see -- or even imagine -- if it weren't for his skilful writing. This novel, set on the lonely far northwest coast of California, covers plenty of those sides of humanity as surf and native american culture mix with a little of the occult. For the surfer, there are waves and surf spots of legend on this coast -- if you know where to find them. But one sometimes pays a very high price for a great wave, as some find out in The Dogs of Winter.

I don't really want to give away any of the plot, but for what I've written. The Dogs of Winter is a unique book that any mystery fan would like, surfer or not. It's a very fine effort by an author who I hope will be more prolific. I highly recommend it.