Ride the High Waves

Vin Smith is back with a tour de force coming-of-age novel forty years in the making. Based on the tumultuous first semester of his freshman year in college, Ride the High Waves is an astoundingly erotic study of love and loss, and the desperate search for meaning.

Losing his beloved grandfather on the first day of classes, Vin meets Kathy Baumgarner, an equally lost freshman coping with deaths in her own family. Unwilling to let the young Theology major she is falling in love with sink into the depths of depression, Kathy lends a sympathetic ear as Vin recounts the extraordinary life of his New England grandfather, while at the same time working through the pain of his dysfunctional California family.

The lovers find themselves at odds with authority figures at the university as they take turns sneaking inside each other's dormitory rooms. A series of breathtaking adventures draw them even closer until Kathy's childhood girlfriend, Mickie Marson, herself falls in love with the rebellious young man. Will it be the death of a beautiful, fiery romance, or will there be an old-fashioned menage a trois?