On a wave

the long version

"A disenchanted, unemployed English professor decides one day on a whim - partly playful, partly desperate - to sneak off from his temp job in Manhattan and catch a wave off a dingy Queens shoreline. How did he become this semidepressed, chain-smoking, aimless man, when for a few shining years of his childhood he was invincible?". "The boy is Thad Ziolkowski, who grows up amid the late '60s counterculture in coastal Florida. After his parents' divorce, nine-year-old Thad escapes from his difficult family - notably a brooding and explosive new stepfather - by heading for the thrilling, unchartered waters of the local beach. There, buoyed by the primal force and tribal inclusion of surfing, he pours his adolescent energy into mastering the almost mystical intricacies of the waves. In the bosom of the surf the boy is able to stay offshore for years, until his life is upended once again, this time by tragedy; depositing him at a crossroads between a life in the waves and coming back to land."--BOOK JACKET.