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The Water's End

by Christopher Hawkins

202 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0127; ISBN 1-55212-728-1; US$20.00, C$23.95, EUR15.60, £11.50

The story of a young man who fulfills a lifelong dream by dropping out of mainstream society. He discovers a tropical paradise in a remote corner of Pacific Mexico, only to find it threatened.

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About the book      About the author      Sample excerpt      Reviews      Catalogue info

About the Book The Water's End is the story of Rob Miner, a blue-collar kid from coastal New Jersey trying to find his place in the world. He has spent his entire life dreaming of a tropical paradise where he can forget his past and surf the blue waves that haunt him. When the story opens, his grandmother has just died, and Rob knows he has nothing left to keep him home. He heads for Pacific Mexico, and winds up in a remote corner of Oaxaca, full of white beaches and empty waves, Zapatista rebels and Mayan ruins. There he finds everything he'd always longed for, including another American traveler with whom he falls in love. Rob revels in his nirvana, but it does not last long. He soon discovers that the American girl is not who she claimed. She too is hiding from her past, and has brought trouble to Mexico. With one stroke, Rob's dreamscape is threatened, and he is on the run again, towards some painful lessons about life, love and dreaming.

About the Author Christopher Hawkins lives in San Diego, California with his wife. He has travelled extensively in search of surf, including Baja, mainland Mexico, Costa Rica, Hawaii, Indonesia and New Zealand. The author welcomes your comments via e-mail at chawkins@thewatersend.com

Reviews

"A triumph, a poignant and compelling narrative worthy of the cinema."

Bruce Jenkins
San Francisco Chronicle,Surfer Magazine
October, 2001

"What begins as a travel tale ends up as any good journey should, where 'happily ever after' leaves off."

Marcus Sanders
Surfing Magazine
December 6, 2001.

"The story of a young soul-searching cavalier, constantly losing in the material world but gaining in the spiritual, who must ultimately choose between the law and love in a foreign land."

Carl Friedman
Surfer Magazine
May 2002

"... measured and eloquent, pulling you hand-over-hand into a page-turning exercise of obsessive-compulsive disorder." Scott Hulet
The Surfer's Journal
May 2002

"Hawkins poignantly recreates the wave-riding experience and nails the vivid imagery of the Mexican surf culture."

Chris Towery
Eastern Surf Magazine
March 2002

"... a fun read... a genuine vibe of third world surf travel..."

Devon Howard
Longboard Magazine
March 2002

" ... Hawkins has a story that flows much the same as some of the perfectly cresting peaks he describes. In real life and his novel, one wave is never exactly like another and a surfer can never keep nature's powerful creation harnessed beneath his board at every moment. In essence, it's Hawkins' ability to accentuate this often turbulent yet nurturing experience, and then use it as a paradigm for other life experiences that makes this book a smooth and satisfying ride."

Brandon Lee,
Honolulu Star Bulletin,
September 16,2001

"A well-made scene can lend the reader memories of experiences he or she has never had. Hawkins' crisp prose does so, allowing even those who've never heard it in real life to become familiar with the peculiar hiss and rattle of a board cutting through the water, sliding down the face of a wave."

Ann M. Sato,
Honolulu Advertiser,
September 8, 2001

"The beautifully descriptive story grips your from the very first page. You find yourself effortlessly immersed in the characters."

Amazon.com customer
January 22, 2002

"... amazing... you will just fall in love with this book."

Barnes and Noble customer
February 20, 2002

Sample Excerpt

The following morning, Rob stood in the driveway of Helena's, two boards upright next to him and a daypack strapped to his shoulders. Benito poured gasoline from a steel can into a faded blue Honda Express. Then he climbed aboard the moped, kick-started the engine with a rumble and motioned Rob aboard. They had tied the two boards together with bailing twine, forming a sling that held them by nose and tail. Rob eased the makeshift harness to his shoulder and lowered himself onto the rear seat. The old cycle sagged beneath their weight, and Benito checked both tires to see that they cleared their fenders. When the boy throttled up, Rob teetered and nearly slid off the back, grabbing Benito by the waist. With a whine, the moped shuttered out into the street like a sad circus mule overburdened with cargo.

They'd covered half the distance to town before Rob got the boards situated and his feet up on the pegs. They passed the cutoff to the main highway inland, and rode through town on Boulevard Virgilio Uribe. Tin warehouses and docks of the Naval Base blurred by, and they crossed a one-lane wooden bridge spanning an arroyo that looked as if it had not seen water in a hundred years. On the far side of the riverbed, town gave way to countryside and the road split, pavement heading west towards Zipolite, a dirt track hugging the coast.

Rob looked down at his bare feet in sandals, inches from the whirling spokes and the burning muffler. He closed his eyes and held tight to Benito's waist.

"How old are you?" Rob yelled into the wind.

"Catorce."

"Fourteen?" The boy turned fully around, and Rob shouted back, "Keep your eyes on the road."

The moped climbed through headlands so rocky they fought back the jungle. Cactus and Pinon eked out a strained existence from the rock and clay. Patches of standing Acacias dotted the flats, hemmed in by villainous thorn forest. The lost soul with no map would never guess the Pacific lay within a hundred yards.

"I don't think I'll get off the main road anywhere around here." They dropped back onto coastal plain, and in the center of a shallow valley they rode through a cluster of adobe homes. A little boy tugged on a rope tied to a goat that would not move, its hooves spiked into the ground defiantly, horns wavering like daggers. Benito hit his own horn near the struggling twosome and the beep startled the goat, which jumped forward, sending the boy reeling backwards to land on his haunches in the grass. Rob laughed and turned around to see the little boy hurl a rock vainly towards them.

They witnessed few other signs of settlement, and after fifteen minutes turned off the dirt road onto a narrow trail that wound down to the waterline. Rob had never seen such a beach, composed entirely of black rock, sloping steeply to the water. The dark bottom colored the water a surreal azure beneath the morning sun. Because of the severe drop, the impact zone lay less than thirty yards from shore. They could see shoreline reflecting in the blue mirrors of cresting waves. A south breeze chopped the water's surface, but swells marched shoreward strong and clean.

"Nice shape for beach break," said Rob.

"How do you say, rock bottom?"

Rob unvelcroed his Tevas. "That's exactly right." The big stones felt warm and polished beneath his feet, and he picked one up and skimmed it across the flats. The swell showed mostly west, and Rob said, "These waves are all going to be right handed. What's 'right'? Derecha?"

"Derecha." Benito smiled for the first time, losing the strained look of worry he usually wore, and he laughed at Rob's pronunciation. "You do not like?"

"No, I like. It's just that I'm goofy foot, and I surf better on left-breaking waves."

Benito pointed at Rob. "Goofy. Hah." With happiness painted across his face he looked to Rob like a different boy.

They waded into the water, boards over their heads, and with a few steps were waist deep. Rob stood still on the slick rocks, wanting to see a set roll across the break, but when Benito paddled past him he could wait no longer and dove after the boy. His eyes focused on the bottom, black rocks shining dark beneath the clear water, the whole scene painted impossibly blue by the heavens floating above. They paddled out in twenty seconds with their hair still dry.

"Where do you get your boards, Benito?"

"From Americans who stay here. They leave them. Old ones." They let the first set wave go by, watching from behind as it peaked like an A-frame, head high, and broke down the beach, white water rolling up onto the dark rocks of the beach. They both spun their boards and paddled for the second wave. Benito, going front side and fifty pounds lighter than Rob, was on his feet before Rob had even begun to pop up. Rob stopped and let the wave pull out from beneath him, watching Benito skate his way down the line. When the boy kicked out, he turned back to Rob grinning and raised a hand to his forehead, saluting as he sunk into the water. Rob shook his head and paddled back towards the peak.

Four sets came and went before Benito let Rob have a wave, and the boy was enjoying the American's frustration. When Rob finally caught a wave, he was slow to his feet, and the awkwardness he always felt when first going backside hindered his hips and his torso. He never hit full speed. Once the hierarchy was set, he let Benito take his choice of wave, and Rob would hope for a decent one to follow. "You know," called Rob, "the only reason you're beating me here is because you're going front side and I'm going backside."

The boy lay on his back, outstretched on the board, arms and legs agape as if trying to grab the clouds floating above him. He laughed.

"Plus," said Rob, trying to keep a straight face, "I've never surfed this break before. And more importantly, I weigh twice what you do. There's no way I could be that fast down the line in three foot slop."

The boy smiled and stifled another laugh.

"It's true," said Rob, grinning, still trying to sound serious. "Tomorrow we find a lefthander and I'll be all over you. And just wait 'til the big juice starts pouring in. You'll be on the beach watching me, little man."

After an hour Rob worked out his backside kinks and began to read the break better. He took off behind Benito on two consecutive waves, hollering at him, waving him aside, but the Indian boy was still too fast and Rob had to punch through the closing wave as the boy disappeared down the line. Benito was quick enough to connect sections, floating over the pillowy white water and landing on the next peeling face. Rob resigned himself to pulling floaters and landing them on the flats. They surfed for two and half hours, alone in the water, sun traveling high above them, until their faces burned and their arms trembled with fatigue and their chests were waxed raw. They finally paddled in and sat in the shade of a lonely Colima palm, drinking bottled water and eating cold chicken and tortillas and beans, their salted skin cooling. They rested for a while and then headed home.

Catalogue Information