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.
A novel by E. A. Westbo
It is the winter of 1877, and Olav Hestby is on the wrong side of an ocean. A man who has gone as far as he has gone does not come back in a season; the way home runs through one year and the next, through leak-with-the-sea and bilge-pump bars, through ports where he learns what the body of a sailor at the watch-changes will and will not carry. What he is sailing toward has not stood still and waited for him.
Book II · chapters
The return
Prologue
For Those Who Came the Long Way Home
*A man may come back to the place he left* *and still be a long way from home.*
Chapter I
Day Two
Chapter II
The First Gale
Chapter III
Lindøy in Winter
Chapter IV
Pumping
Chapter V
The Water-Tank
Chapter VI
The Hamar Lad
Chapter VII
Hamburg
Chapter VIII
Hiring
Chapter IX
Hogfeed
Chapter X
The Steward and the Second Mate
Chapter XI
Brooklyn Anchorage
Chapter XII
Lindøy in Spring
Chapter XIII
Festive Days
Chapter XIV
Wharf-rats
Chapter XV
Hebburn
Chapter XVI
To Bordeaux
Chapter XVII
Two Dudes in Bordeaux
Chapter XVIII
The Sandefjord Ship
Chapter XIX
Coast Home
Chapter XX
Stavanger Wharf
Chapter XXI
The Brothers and the Father
Chapter XXII
Vestbø
Chapter XXIII
The Summer
Chapter XXIV
To Stavanger
Chapter XXV
Bredalmendingen
Chapter XXVI
Prof Nilson's Room
Chapter XXVII
Skating
Chapter XXVIII
Bethania
Chapter XXIX
The Cough
Chapter XXX
Silence with Olava
Chapter XXXI
Lindøy in March
Chapter XXXII
Hamre and the Latitude Scale
Chapter XXXIII
Jens at Vestbø
Chapter XXXIV
Empty Hands
Chapter XXXV
Vignesholmene
Chapter XXXVI
Hire onto Brio
Chapter XXXVII
Vardøy Gray
Chapter XXXVIII
Captain Sars
Chapter XXXIX
Inside Coast
Chapter XL
Lindøy in September
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.