Finnoybu

A trilogy

The Finnoybu Trilogy

Three voyages. One sailor. The last age of sail and what it cost a man to come home from it.

by E. A. Westbo

Olav Hestby ships out of Stavanger as a boy of eighteen with his father's blessing and a promise to the girl he means to marry. Seven years and twenty-one voyages later, the man who comes back is not the boy who left, and the home he was sailing toward did not stand still and wait for him. This is the trilogy of his going out, his long return, and what he carried up from the boat that no ship completes.

The three books

Salt and Silence — cover

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.

Read Book I
The Long Return — cover
Forthcoming

Book II

The Long Return

A man may come back to the place he left and still be a long way from home. This is the book of his return — through ships he would not have chosen and ports he never meant to see.

Forthcoming

Book III

Drawer of Vows

Forthcoming

Book III

Drawer of Vows

The third book. What is set down and never sent. What is taken up and never spoken. The trilogy ends where it can.

Forthcoming

Also from Finnoybu · true memoir

Reminiscences

The actual voyages of Olavus Bjørnson Vestbø — the great-great-grandfather whose life became this trilogy. His own unvarnished account of seven years at sea, in his own voice.

Read the memoir at memoirs.finnoybu.com