Author(s): Kem Nunn

SECONDHAND BOOKS | Literary Fiction

Jack Fletcher's stuffed, a former hot-shot surf photographer now surviving on hack work, beer and muscle relaxants, a failed marriage just behind him, nothing in front of him that he can look forward to with anything less than bleak uncertain apprehension. Then he gets a call from the editor of a surfing magazine he used to work for, back in his glory days, when he was known as Dr Fun, a name he lived up to then, and more. He's offered an assignment he can't quite believe - to photograph Drew Harmon, surfing a remote reef called Heart Attacks, long-thought to be just a myth, but discovered now by Harmon.For Fletcher, Harmon and Heart Attacks and ride the winter waves, Harmon and Fletcher and the two obnoxious surf punks have to cross a tract of blasted headland known ominously to the Hupa, Yurok Tolowan Indians who live there.With two snotty young surfing champions in tow, Fletcher heads into the grim wilderness of Northern California, where Harmon now lives in reduced circumstances in a desolate location on Indian land, just below the Oregon border, with his half mad wife , Kendra, who wanders the woods at night wearing the clothes of a murdered woman. This is not what Jack had been expecting, and things get worse.The white men are blamed by the Indians, several of whom swear vengeance, kidnap and brutalise the tormented Kendra and then set off to kill the surfers, setting the book up then for its inevitable tragic climax.

1999. A very good copy.