Every Boat Turns South [Hardcover]

J.P. White (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2009

Matt Younger is a 30-year-old boat delivery captain, who returns to Amelia Island, Florida from the Dominican Republic to make a confession to his dying father.
With two companions, a cook named Jesse, and Phillip, a French mechanic, Matt tells his father how he set off from West Palm Beach on board Stardust, a 40' trimaran that will be tested as much as the crew. Matt reveals how, instead of sailing Stardust in one outside shot to ST. Thomas, he drifts through the Bahamas, arriving in the Turks & Caicos, just as the trade winds switch against him. There in the Cockburn Harbor, Matt's brush with a drug pilot will take him off course to the Dominican Republic where the dreams that enchant these three sailors are paid for in lust, betrayal, and violence.
When Matt meets Rosario, a sensuous Dominican woman, he believes she can help him outdistance his guilt over his role in the premature death of his brother who was the father's favorite son, yet Rosario has her own dream of escape which she must negotiate just as Matt presses her to leave with him for St. Thomas.
Every Boat Turns South is, in part, a meditation on dying, on love and forgiveness as well as an adventure odyssey of the wayward flesh and the returning spirit, and on how one re-invents and denies the past in order to redeem the present.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This stylish debut novel from poet White (The Salt Hour) brings to mind John D. MacDonald's Florida noirs, but with a modern sensibility. In 1983, after a three-year absence, high school dropout Matt Younger, 30, returns to his parents' cottage on Amelia Island, Fla. The family's discontent stems from the earlier drowning of Matt's older brother, Hale, the family god. Matt's father, Jack, is dying of congestive heart failure while his mother, Emily, is exhausted from around-the-clock caregiving. Relieving his mother, Matt updates Jack on his shady adventures as the self-styled king of all sailing fools. Working as a skipper, Matt was hired to pilot a boat from Florida to St. Thomas and en route takes up cocaine running for drug lord Jimmy Q, eventually stealing $2 million worth of coke. But when he docks in the Dominican Republic for repairs, his real troubles begin, in the form of deliciously nasty femme fatale Jesse Dove and Matt's love interest, local hooker Rosario Estrella. White's vivid prose, layered plot line and detailed acumen of Caribbean sailing all boost his impressive yarn above run-of-the-mill noirs. (Sept.)
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Review

...lovers of the sea and adventure will appreciate the long poetic passages paying tribute to the skills of the sailor and the dangers of deep water. -- Boy meets boat; boy meets girl; boy meets another girl; boy meets cocaine; boy loses boat it s complicated... Matt Younger is the kind of guy trouble seeks out, owing mainly to his unusual and adventurous choices. After a 13-year hiatus from home, he s come back in a confessional mode. He wants to tell his dying father Skip about his adventures during this time, but also about his complicity in the drowning of older brother Hale, a golden boy, star athlete and potential Olympian who had an untamed side of which their parents were ignorant. Skip is on his deathbed, and Matt takes over his mother s duties as night nurse. The narrative alternates between Matt s solicitude for his unforgiving (and semi-conscious) father and flashbacks to the period after he dropped out of high school in the wake of Hale s death. Sailing Sam Wells 40-foot trimaran Stardust from Key West to St. Thomas, Matt gets stranded in the Turks and Caicos; he misses the Trades shift by one day, and the intractable winds are likely to keep him there for several months. About this time he encounters two characters who will irrevocably alter his life: cocaine dealer Jimmy Q and femme fatale Jenny. Jimmy Q persuades Matt to do an easy cocaine pickup, but Matt plans a complicated and dangerous hat trick to double-cross Jimmy Q, steal the cocaine and also steal Sam s boat. To muddle things still further, Matt then meets and falls in love with Rosario, who has an unknown agenda of her own. Metaphorically caught between two women, he winds up getting literally caught by a corrupt comandante in the Dominican Republic. White rings some compelling changes in a convoluted tale that leads to Matt s redemption. --Kirkus

Every Boat Turns South mixes memoir-like adventure with a moving coming-home tale. The book opens and closes in Florida, but its sultry and terror-filled center is set in the Turks & Caicos Islands and in the Dominican Republic (a nice touch is the inclusion of a map in the front). By interweaving the Florida bedside scenes with Matt s confessional account of his wild life in the Caribbean, White subtly builds sympathy for his ne er-do-well drifter, as Matt slowly reveals the truth about Hale by coming to understand his own impulses and needs and by cherishing, through memory, all that his father had taught him. The writing in both sections forcefully lyrical and full of maritime detail (sailors will love this book) suggests an autobiographical prompt, but clearly the author is in command of a style that effectively serves his complex plot. The flashbacks pulse with sensuality, the take on island natives and tourists is nothing less than superb: The hotel swarms with interracial couples strung together like rosary beads . . . white women, pale as chalk, lean into black men like they ve found the Rosetta stone. White men pull at strings of mulatto women like taffy. Merengue and rum, greed and sex rule. Everything. Everyone. As one of the novel s shrewd and exotic characters says, we all have our weaknesses once we get to the islands. Read this before you make winter vacation plans. --The Independent

Boy meets boat; boy meets girl; boy meets another girl; boy meets cocaine; boy loses boat it s complicated... Matt Younger is the kind of guy trouble seeks out, owing mainly to his unusual and adventurous choices. After a 13-year hiatus from home, he s come back in a confessional mode. He wants to tell his dying father Skip about his adventures during this time, but also about his complicity in the drowning of older brother Hale, a golden boy, star athlete and potential Olympian who had an untamed side of which their parents were ignorant. Skip is on his deathbed, and Matt takes over his mother s duties as night nurse. The narrative alternates between Matt s solicitude for his unforgiving (and semi-conscious) father and flashbacks to the period after he dropped out of high school in the wake of Hale s death. Sailing Sam Wells 40-foot trimaran Stardust from Key West to St. Thomas, Matt gets stranded in the Turks and Caicos; he misses the Trades shift by one day, and the intractable winds are likely to keep him there for several months. About this time he encounters two characters who will irrevocably alter his life: cocaine dealer Jimmy Q and femme fatale Jenny. Jimmy Q persuades Matt to do an easy cocaine pickup, but Matt plans a complicated and dangerous hat trick to double-cross Jimmy Q, steal the cocaine and also steal Sam s boat. To muddle things still further, Matt then meets and falls in love with Rosario, who has an unknown agenda of her own. Metaphorically caught between two women, he winds up getting literally caught by a corrupt comandante in the Dominican Republic. White rings some compelling changes in a convoluted tale that leads to Matt s redemption. --Kirkus

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Permanent Press (September 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579621880
• ISBN-13: 978-1579621889
• Product Dimensions: 5.9 x 8.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,111,241 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

J.P. White spent his childhood summers sailing on Lake Erie. In the early 1980s, he worked delivering sailboats up and down the Eastern seaboard, to the Bahamas and the Caribbean. He currently sails a Cape Dory 25D out of St. Louis Bay on Lake Minnetonka, near Minneapolis, Minnesota. In the last 35 years, J.P. White has published essays, articles, fiction, reviews, interviews and poetry in more than 100 publications including The Nation, The New Republic, The New York Times Book Review, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Gettysburg Review, American Poetry Review, and Poetry (Chicago). He is a graduate of New College in Sarasota, Florida, Colorado State University and Vermont College. He is the author of four books of poems. Every Boat Turns South is his first novel. Visit the author online at www.jpwhite.net.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Poet First September 4, 2009

By David L. Danielson

Format:Hardcover

Every Boat Turns South
J. P. White
Review- Dave Danielson

A poet writes a first novel. That may be newsworthy but it ought not to be. A teacher once said, "No one should attempt a novel until they have written poetry." J.P. White has learned to turn a phrase as well as tack into the wind in a Bermuda '40 "any sailor's wet dream." It's first rate entertainment, a good enough reason for reading.

That is not to say that it is not literary which is another reason for reading like eating lima beans, `because they're good for you.' It's not altogether impossible, as White has shown, to create a book that is both literary and entertaining, but it is a delicate balance.

Writing is above all a dialogue, because words are essentially worthless. They are merely symbols representing reality; they are not themselves reality. If words are not vehicles of conveyance between writer (speaker) and reader (hearer) they are no more than blowing in the wind. Words are used to excite an image in a reader's brain. If there is no image in the brain even remotely related to the word trigger, nothing happens except maybe inducing sleep.

That's what many poets do to me. They know things I don't know, and if they're really exceptionally literary they know things that maybe almost no one knows. That proves how genuinely literary they are. It also is proof of the reader's gross ignorance which is a good reason not to read highly literary works, prose as well as poetry. It sometimes takes a wounded ego a long time to recover from the attempt.

It seems there's a continuum between expression and communication. A retired newspaper editor has sent me a few of his novels. He knows how to communicate, sell newspapers. He learned well the code: who, what, where, and when.... I read his novels for the raw facts, but they're not much fun. He might describe a woman's dress as "red," whereas the poet would describe the dress as "a red like the sun moments before dipping beneath the desert landscape." Both trigger images in the brain, but the last one is replete with overtones that send the mind circling on a vaster voyage. If someone has never seen a desert sunset the phrase is lost in the wind. White is somewhere on that continuum but leaning very definitely toward the expressive end.

White's novel depends on a knowledge of the sea, some familiarity with island people, and at least a perfunctory knowledge of trimming the sheets. If you think that has to do with hemming the material you sleep upon at night you might be better off not reading his book. I suspect White might include a phrase that is a personal delight even if no reader can really interpret it, but he does so frugally. He even manages to teach a few things about sailing a trimaran through hostile trade winds, and expanding one's data base is worth the effort too.

I especially appreciated White's efforts to write to the last page. So many recent novels hook a reader at the start, keep them churning along through most of the book, and then appear to give up at the last. It's as though they are hearing some publisher say, "Get it done already. We're already advertising the book." Maybe they just don't know how to bring it all to a conclusive ending that makes some sense; they don't even try.

So, read Every Boat Turns South, cash in your IRAs, abandon the suburbs, kiss the kids goodbye, and look for your Tabula Rasa* with or without a Rosario.

* Tabula Rasa --- A great name for a boat embarking upon which even us octogenarians may yet learn a thing or two. Read more ›

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating tale, well thought out August 24, 2009

By M. Redetzke

Format:Hardcover

I really enjoyed this book, it's evidently White's first novel and I was impressed. I am normally a person who reads typical spy/espionage/terrorist/crime type of fiction but this one was recommended to me and I must say, it captured my interest from start to finish. It actually had some sort of deep seeded tie to my own life in a lot of ways. Good writer, look forward to more from him.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars poetic action on the seas of life November 1, 2009

By Willow A. King

Format:Hardcover

I am not usually attracted to noir fiction or "action" novels in the traditional sense and yet this beautiful first novel by JP White is both of those things and still manages to be rich in language, sensuous scenery and intriguing characters. His portrait of a man in search of redemption is rooted in much of the great literature of the past and yet he paints a modern, rum blurred, lusty, capricious hero that conjures both pirate, poet and child. Just like Matt Younger, you won't be able to resist the pull of the tides, the sultry islands that whisper fortune (both good and bad) and the curvaceous Rosario, siren in a green dress. Read this book! You will feel like you have taken a vacation to hell and back between the covers of a book, with the wind at your back.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars More than a sailing adventure in the Caribbean... September 18, 2009

By M. Wikman

Format:Hardcover

I couldn't help but get caught up in this book. Not because I'm a guy who has sailed the Caribbean, but because of the drama, adventure and unexpected twists and turns in the story. The fact that the author is a poet explains the abundance of unusual similes and metaphors. This is an engaging novel set in a romantic place. It's more than a sailing adventure in the Caribbean. It's about family, loss, fortune, misfortune, amends and attempts at redemption. Best of all, it's a compelling story. I recommend it.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read and Not Just for Sailors November 13, 2009

By Kevin Crothers

Format:Hardcover

Every Boat Turns South is an outstanding work, remarkable for a first-time novelist. JP White is masterful in weaving together three different stories all in the same work: his father's terminal illness, the past mystery of losing his brother and of course, the main thread dealing with the protagonist's infamous sailing and island exploits.

The sailing will be familiar to any sailor and the island flavor reminiscent to anyone who has been to the Caribbean. This book however, stands on its own even if the reader can't tell a tack from a jibe or has never had toes in the warm sand.

The characters are more than believable with ruthless men, manipulating women and parents lost in their own personal reflections in the Decembers of their own days.

Every Boat Turns South will never be a made-for-Disney flick, although it would make a terrific movie. It's raucous and racy, just like a good page-turner should be. Thumbs up!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Power of the Sea Meets the Pen of a Poet in a Formidable First Novel October 17, 2009

By GKP

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Dip your toes into the first pages of J.P. White's tale of the sea and -- Wham! -- you are sucked in by the riptide of White's powerful, poetic prose. Out to sea you go on a crafty, incredibly detailed Caribbean adventure filled with unexpected twist and turns, love and violence among intricately drawn characters, and a deep passion for the sea and all it represents in the human experience. By the time the voyage is complete, and the final boat turns south, you are deposited back on shore to regain your land legs and contemplate so much about your own life, your fears, your relationships, your responsibilities to family and self. I am always on the lookout for first novels and this is the best I've read in many years, maybe the best ever.