In the Sky: A fantasia about rowing

I dog-eared Rob Slocum's In the Sky in 24 hours, at first captivated by its characters. The former swimmer from Milwaukee, the audacious Adonis from Buffalo, the toughie nicknamed Caveman, and the prankster everybody called Boudreau were based on members of my own freshman eight. I flinched as I waited for accounts of exploits not fit for print. Thankfully, they never materialized.

What did was reminiscent of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--an intermittent discourse on religion and spirituality wrapped around a journey. Through the perspective of walk-on Bozzy, Slocum weaves ideas--both fundamental and tangential to rowing--through a promising crew's pursuit of excellence while its coach, the paternal Archie, fights for his life off the water.

Slocum capitalized on his sculling prowess to provide technical descriptions that rival anything in the small canon of rowing fiction. It's unlikely that non-rowers will understand those passages, and it's unfortunate that the magic of championship rowing and its accompanying emotions are so tough to translate to print. But Slocum comes as close to capturing that quicksilver as anyone.

The author swings like his crew when he thinks freely--away from the constraints of storytelling--and expresses those thoughts through the sage voice of Archie. Many of the musings are whimsical, but they're relevant to any collective pursuit of speed in a shell.

Topher Bordeau in Rowing News, July 2007