Publishers Weekly
03/01/2021
Journalist Fairbanks debuts with a deeply reported and moving account of how a tragedy has affected a Long Island fishing community. In March 1984, the four-man commercial fishing boat Wind Blown disappeared in a nor’easter between Montauk Point and Block Island. Fairbanks sketches how Montauk and other Long Island villages became playgrounds for wealthy New Yorkers who spent summers there, and shows that by the 1980s, soaring property rates pushed commercial fishermen to go farther out to sea in pursuit of more profitable catches. She notes that commercial fishing has “a fatality rate twenty-nine times higher than the average for all other occupations,” and describes the psychological toll on local families through in-depth interviews with relatives and friends of the Wind Blown’s crew members, whose bodies have never been recovered. She notes that all four men had troubled relationships with their fathers, and unearths a family secret that compounded the grief of captain Mike Stedman’s wife and three sons after his death. Fairbanks skillfully folds the socioeconomic issues into her narrative, and brings her subjects, especially Stedman’s widow, Mary, to vivid life. The result is a memorable portrait of loss. (May)
From the Publisher
A memorable lost-at-sea narrative focusing on a Montauk-based commercial fishing boat... well-documented, page-turning ... a no-brainer for fans of The Perfect Storm and similar books. A riveting man-vs.-nature story and compelling tribute to those who perished.”
—Kirkus (starred review)
“Deeply reported and moving...A memorable portrait of loss.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Readers fascinated by stories of shipwreck such as Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm may be similarly intrigued by this sad tale.”
—Booklist
“Fairbanks deftly handles the story, with an eye for detail and page-turning prose. An evocative, well-researched, and compelling account, this highly recommended book will stay with readers past the last page.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
“A sweeping, and often devastating, portrait of a community on the brink of transformation, and of how grief can ricochet across generations.”
—Vanity Fair
“[A] must-read.”
—Town & Country
“In 1984, commercial fishing boat Wind Blown left Montauk Harbor in a routine voyage with four souls aboard, ran into a nor'easter, and never returned. This thoughtful account explores the tragedy at sea and the repercussions for those left behind.”
—USA Today
“A remarkable feat of reporting... The Lost Boys of Montauk is a poignant tale of how an incident nearly 40 years old can still reverberate in a town much changed by money but not by memory.”
—Air Mail
"A relentlessly reported page-turner about the collision of man and nature on the ocean and the collateral damage back on land.”
—Tom Clavin, New York Times bestselling author of Dodge City and Tombstone
“This extensive and stunningly reported true story of a tragic shipwreck off Montauk is tinged with that rebel late-hippie-era vibe of the late seventies and early eighties. It's about family secrets, romances cut short, the fishing life, and the evolving history of the East End of Long Island, now known as ‘The Hamptons.’ It’s an honest and touching book, and a hell of a story.”
—Ron Suskind, bestselling author of Life, Animated
“The Lost Boys of Montauk is riveting. Combining gorgeous prose and exhaustive research, Fairbanks paints a fascinating portrait of a shipwreck and its aftermath. It's a complex tale of class divides in the Hamptons, of grief, passion, memory, and youth. Over the course of the book, we come to know and care deeply for the young men who were lost at sea and for those who live on to tell their story. A must-read.”
—J. Courtney Sullivan, bestselling author of Friends and Strangers
“Not since Peter Matthiessen’s Men’s Lives has there been such an insightful depiction of the struggles, joys, and dangers of being a fisherman out of Montauk. The Lost Boys of Montauk is beautifully written and impeccably researched. You’ll never again hear the words ‘lost at sea’ and not think of this book.”
—Steven Gaines, bestselling author of Philistines at the Hedgerow
“Four commercial fishermen perished in a late-winter storm off the coast of Long Island in 1984. Through obsessively detailed reporting, clear, powerful writing, and the unstoppable storytelling of a thriller, Amanda Fairbanks has made this one event stand for a whole world. The Lost Boys of Montauk is an unforgettable portrait of fishermen’s culture, of the peculiarities of a place inhabited by ordinary people and the very rich, and of the ways in which a tragedy can exert a force on people’s lives down through the decades.”
—Nicholas Lemann, author of Transaction Man
“The Lost Boys of Montauk describes the permanent shadow cast across the lives of the women, men, and children affected by the sinking of the Wind Blown in a winter storm forty years ago, with all four young men aboard lost at sea. Amanda Fairbanks collects the histories of the men and their families and describes the atmosphere of a fishing town at the eastern end of Long Island. Her book is a kind of collective testimony, a chorus of voices that would not otherwise have been heard.”
—Alec Wilkinson, author of The Riverkeeper
“This grippingly reported book is about social class and boundaries, about family, about the web of pain — grief, drugs, alcoholism, divorce, loneliness — that spins out of devastating loss. From generation to generation, from family to family, Fairbanks documents trauma’s insidious effect on an entire East End community.”
—Susan Scarf Merrell, author of Shirley
“An arresting, awesome story — vivid and sensory, and as hypnotic as the tides of the sea. Fairbanks is an in-depth reporter who weaves wonderfully a vastly researched tale into a cinematic page-turner.”
—Mira Ptacin, author of The In-Betweens
“The Lost Boys of Montauk gives something of an idea of what Steinbeck and Melville might have produced had they written narrative nonfiction together. In telling the tragic tale of four men whose lives were cut short, Fairbanks crafts a gripping portrait not only of the characters, but of a time and place now trapped in the amber of the not-too-distant past.”
—Graydon Carter, Editor of Air Mail
“Amanda Fairbanks' story of the Wind Blown and the four men who died at sea, their lives, and the disaster's long effects is a brilliantly reported, heartrending epic that captures the beautiful, complicated—and in this case, tragic—threads in a community that I have long called home and that my family's newspaper has covered for generations. This book belongs in every South Fork collection.”
—David Rattray, Editor, The East Hampton Star
“[R]iveting... powerful and poignant ...This is a book eloquent with the sorrow and the beauty of being on this earth, and no less expressive of the love. After all, the author writes, 'grieving is the last way we get to love someone.'”
—The Wall Street Journal
“In The Lost Boys of Montauk, Sag Harbor-based writer Amanda M. Fairbanks, through skillful reporting and masterful writing, captures in haunting detail the lives of the four young crewmen and the foregone world they came to represent.”
—Newsday
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-03-03
A memorable lost-at-sea narrative focusing on a Montauk-based commercial fishing boat.
On March 22, 1984, the Wind Blown left Montauk Harbor in search of tilefish more than 100 miles offshore. The crew consisted of Cpt. Michael Stedman, mate David Connick, and deckhands Michael Vigilant and Scott Clarke. According to reports, the first few days of their trip were not fruitful; however, conditions soon became “boiling hot,” with “tilefish coming up on every hook.” One week in, however, the crew confronted a “dreaded nor’easter,” not uncommon in the “unpredictable” March and April weather. The ship and its crew never returned. In this well-documented, page-turning debut book, Sag Harbor–based journalist Fairbanks, who has worked at HuffPost and the New York Times, explores the circumstances leading to the ship’s disappearance as well as how memories of the crew members have affected their loved ones. The author is particularly good in her examination of the complicated social dynamics involved in the lives of career fishermen. Regarding her reasons for writing the book, Fairbanks notes, “I wanted to understand how tragedies become imprinted in our memories, how trauma and grief wend their way through generations and become a kind of inheritance bequeathed to our descendants.” She accomplishes that mission and more, offering a well-fleshed-out portrait of the Montauk community and its residents and the evolution of the area as both the largest commercial fishing harbor in New York state and a summer haven for the wealthy. Along the way, Fairbanks also discovers a few closely held secrets that have had a tremendous impact on the lives of those involved. The author’s genuine desire to provide an accurate account of the history of the Wind Blown and the lives of its crew members is evident in her extensive research and attention to detail, making this a no-brainer for fans of The Perfect Storm and similar books.
A riveting man-vs.-nature story and compelling tribute to those who perished.
