The Dogs of Winter

I truly enjoyed the book. Highly recommended to keep you company on those surf trips that take you to cold parts of the world.

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.

Kem Nunn delivers his readers into the perilous turbulence created by the combination of obsession and desire. His story revolves around the sport of surfing, and is quite eloquently detailed. But his message can certainly be understood (and deeply) by anyone with a passion for an ultimate state of being. Be that the dedicated journey for a perfect wave, the pefect thermal or the perfect trout! It's a great story, well told. And as far as I know, I am no relation.

Old surfers may call beckoning waves of mystically mythical proportion "the dogs of winter," but Kem Nunn extends that definition -- the dogs that haunt his driven and disturbingly twisted characters are sirens of their minds, leading them into a shared odyssey, if only to dash them against the treacherous rocks of their own broken, internal shores. Fletcher, a desensitized, dimly-focused, former surf-photographer, leads point on Nunn's northwestern adventure -- an eleventh hour quest, reluctantly undertaken, at the unlikely bidding of reclusive, seventies surfing legend, Drew Harmon. Two hot, young pro-surfers accompany Fletcher, whose assignment is to shoot the three elites, new and old, in action, on Northern California's primo waves, in an equally legendary location, never before revealed. Pill-popping Fletcher tries to pass over the nagging undercurrents of why he's been chosen, and exactly what he's been chosen to do, but a volatile convergence of in-your-face egos, dysfunctional dreamers and dyspeptic avengers, quickly force the true nature of this eerily triangulated trek to the foreground. Nunn's northwest breathes damp, deep and true, as does the darkly compelling, unsettling, fictional microcosm within it. This is a full-blooded story, by a writer's writer -- an adventure, told with impressive literary grace. Although a more unfortunate, less likeable assembly of characters is difficult to envision, ultimately their creator not only renders them understandable, but also provides some surprisingly upbeat turns. Halfway through the darkness, queasy readers may wonder if it's worth the trip to get there. Those who do earn a radical ride.

Kem Nunn writes a passionate, archetypal book about an aging boomer surfer, a pioneer who preceded the commercialization of the sport. Once famous surf photographer Jack Fletcher is reduced to shooting weddings in Huntington Beach when he receives a summons from successful magazine publisher, Michael Peters. His mission - pick up two up-and-coming surfers at the airport and transport them to Heart Attacks, a secret, whispered-about spot on the Northern California coast to photograph them with surf legend Drew Harmon. His photos are supposed to show the changing of the guard, the old teaching the young. What actually happens involves the malevolence of man and nature, death, drugs, Native Americans, a young wife, witchcraft, sharks, giant waves, and a few things that defy description. Kem Nunn is an acquired taste, and he even manages a quick salute to an earlier book, "Unassigned Territory"