Finnoybu · Book I
Salt and Silence
In the last great age of sail, a young Norwegian ships out promised to a girl at home — and learns, watch by watch, that the heart keeps two courses at once.
A novel by E. A. Westbo
It is 1875, and eighteen-year-old Olav Hestby sails out of Stavanger as cook on the brig Nanna — with his father's blessing and his promise to the girl he means to marry. Over seven years and as many voyages he will find out what the horizon takes and what it gives back — and he will come home carrying something he cannot yet name, not even to himself.
Book I · chapters
The watches
Prologue
For Those Who Sailed in Silence
*For those who loved in times that had no word for it,* *and for the ones they could not say.*
Chapter I
Vestbø
Chapter II
Day Two
Chapter III
Hebburn
Chapter IV
Homecoming
Chapter V
Winter
Chapter VI
The Upper Field
Chapter VII
Stavanger
Chapter VIII
Two Weeks
Chapter IX
Away Again
Chapter X
Below
Chapter XI
Eliasson
Chapter XII
Twelve Days
Chapter XIII
South
Chapter XIV
The Tagus
Chapter XV
Haakon
Chapter XVI
Palm Sunday
Chapter XVII
Tar
Chapter XVIII
Dead Reckoning
Chapter XIX
The Customhouse
Chapter XX
Vestbø in June
Chapter XXI
Landa
Chapter XXII
The Ravine
Chapter XXIII
Bredalmendingen
Chapter XXIV
The Yellow Ribbon
Chapter XXV
Bethania Hall
Chapter XXVI
The Third Leaving
Chapter XXVII
The North
Chapter XXVIII
The South Run
Chapter XXIX
Wilmington
Chapter XXX
The Hurricane
Chapter XXXI
Bristol
Chapter XXXII
The Bristol Encounter
Chapter XXXIII
Lindøy
Chapter XXXIV
Cape Verde
Chapter XXXV
Jamaica
Chapter XXXVI
The Tar-Mat
Chapter XXXVII
The Upper City
Chapter XXXVIII
The Back Room
Chapter XXXIX
Christmas Day
Also from Finnoybu · true memoir
Reminiscences
The actual voyages of Olavus Bjørnson Vestbø — the great-great-grandfather whose life became this novel. His own unvarnished account of seven years at sea, in his own voice.