A stint in the army and a broken heart lead Kevin Patterson to the dockof a sailboat brokerage on Vancouver Island, where he standscontemplating the romance of the sea and his heartfelt desire to getaway. By the end of the day, he finds himself the neophyte owner of asailboat called the Sea Mouse. He also has a plan: to sail to Tahitiand back, and burn away his failings in hard miles at sea.

First he recruits a traveling companion, another brokenhearted guy whoat least knows how to sail. They set out like the Two Stooges --Seasick and Slapstick. Days without wind are days to kick back on the deck with a beer and a man-versus-nature adventure book that valorizes theirjourney into an essential quest for manhood. But eventually the voyagebegins to take on a sharper edge. On a relentless beat across the SouthPacific, they run across one solitary male sailor after another on thelam, not heroes but refugees. Both the literature and the reality ofmasculine adventure start to pall, and Patterson begins to long forhome.

But to get there, he faces the toughest of trials, single-handedlysailing the Sea Mouse across the North Pacific and through a four-daygale, conscious that no one on earth knows where he is or that he mightdie. The illusion that men are best tested by loneliness and adversitycracks in the force of the wind and the terrifying beat of the water,and The Water In Between becomes a hymn, not to running away butto heading home.

"I devoured Kevin Patterson's The Water In Between. He writeswith such wisdom and clearheadedness, it made even me yearn for theopen seas. It's an extraordinary piece of writing."
   ALEX KOTLOWITZ