Finnegan covered wars for The New Yorker and spent his whole life not telling people he was a surfer, because it sounded ridiculous coming from a serious reporter. Then he wrote this and won the Pulitzer. It starts with a thirteen-year-old haole kid getting beat up at school in Honolulu and figuring out that the water was where he had a chance. From there it’s a life. Hitching around the Pacific in 1978 with a buddy on no money, stumbling onto an empty perfect left off an uninhabited island in Fiji that’s now a resort with a waiting list. Teaching in apartheid Cape Town. Freezing at Ocean Beach in San Francisco chasing giant winter swell. And then, in his forties, Madeira — a Portuguese island out in the Atlantic where the surf is deep-water heavy and the rocks draw blood every time you go in or out. He kept going back for years, waiting on the right day at Jardim do Mar. That’s where the book lands. He’s honest about what it costs — the jobs, the girlfriends, the years — and never once apologizes for it.