“In the not-so-small world of surfing, Phil Jarratt has seen it all. Luckily for us, he’s a fearless, funny storyteller, with a reporter’s unsentimental eye and an endearing modesty. But his memoir is, above all, a haunting self-portrait: the boy practising drop-knee cutbacks in his mother’s full-length mirror in mid-century Wollongong becomes a man.” William Finnegan, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Barbarian Days Life of Brine is the memoir of Phil Jarratt, one of the world’s best-known chroniclers of surfing culture whose lifelong pursuit of the perfect wave has placed him in the midst of some of the most exciting moments in surfing’s modern history. Jarratt, who has courted controversy in his long career as a journalist, editor and documentarian, pulls no punches as he rides an exhilarating wave of nostalgia from the sixties up until now, through the heady days of drugs, alcohol and excess in Bali and Biarritz and other exotic locations in between. Filled with debauchery, reflection and insight, this is a book that will be devoured by surfers young and old.

Ishmael Morgan was six years old when her mother--a long-distance swimmer--disappeared into the ocean. To comfort her, Ishmael's father told her that her mother didn't die but simply swam off into the sunset as a mermaid.

That Summer at Boomerang, by leading surf writer Phil Jarrat, is an evocative retelling of the little known story about the birth of surfing in Australia and the early beginnings of our beach culture and sporting heritage. In the first summer of World War One, while Australian soldiers made their way to the battlefields, the world’s original aquatic superstar sailed for Sydney. Over a two-month, three-state tour, Hawaiian Duke Kahanamoku revolutionised perceptions of surfing and swimming, and changed forever the direction of fifteen-year-old Isabel Letham’s life. When the charistmatic Duke picks an average Aussie girl out of the audience to ride his long board with him into shore before a packed beach, it’s a symbol of the seismic change that is already rippling through the nation as the rules and regulations of the 19th century give way to the anything-goes beach culture we recognise today. The story centres on Sydney, Australia, but moves between Honolulu, Stockholm and the Olympics in 1912, and even California (where the Duke eventually goes in search of a Hollywood film career, followed by Isabel). But many more characters from history people these pages – such as novelist Jack London, our first sport promoter Hugh ‘Huge Deal’ Mcintosh as well as other sporting greats – as one season, one summer, epitomises the end of an era and the birth of a new one. ‘That Summer at Boomerang immerses the reader in a time “when fun was young”. The entwined stories of Duke Kahanamoku and Isabel Letham, whose paths crossed at Freshwater beach at the dawn of the age of celebrity and the beginning of the Great War, are the foreground to a fascinating portrayal of Australia and Hawaii, of sport and business, at that seminal moment.’ MALCOLM KNOX ‘Duke and Isabel are entrenched as iconic figures in the world of surfing. This is a wonderfully romanticised account of what “really” happened in the summer of 1914.’ LAYNE BEACHLEY ‘Phil Jarratt has worked a miracle and resurrected Duke Kahanamoku, bringing him to life with great research, wit and storytelling, and above all love for all of surfing’s characters.’ BOB MCTAVISH Phil Jarratt lives in Noosa, Australia and is the leading writer on surfing and surfing history in Australia. He has published many books on surfing and sport biographies including Salts and Suits, Hottest 100 Surfing Legends, Kelly Slater, Surfing Australia: The Complete History of Surf Board Riding in Australia. He is a former editor of Tracks