Randall Sullivan was a contributing editor at Rolling Stone for over two decades, and besides that he's written several other books. He lives in Oregon, where the Columbia River Bar is located.
First of all though -- "National Bestseller?" I have trouble believing that this book, as locally specific as it is, is a national bestseller. True, I bought it in an airport bookstore in Las Vegas, but I still have trouble believing this book enjoys such widespread popularity. It's not that I'm trying to malign Randall Sullivan's work in terms of quality, it's just that this book is very regional in nature. I have trouble imagining it flying off the shelves in Bangor or Tempe. It's possible that the "National Bestseller" label simply indicates that it sold best in a very specific category, but what that category might be I have no idea.
This book, by the way, doesn't even have its own Wikipedia entry. It's hard to fathom a national bestseller published only a year ago not having a Wikipedia entry.
Anyway, to get on to the actual content of this book, Graveyard of the Pacific is centered around the Columbia River Bar, the place where the Columbia River meets the Pacific Ocean between the states of Washington and Oregon. The Columbia River Bar is, as the title suggests, an extremely dangerous place to pilot a boat.
At the outset of the book the author, aged 70, and his good friend Ray decide to cross the Columbia River Bar in a trimaran, a type of sailboat/kayak hybrid designed for two people. This "crossing of the Bar" is intended to celebrate their decades-long friendship. While detailing their crossing the author explores this friendship, the two friends' strained relationships with their fathers, the history of the Columbia River Bar, and how this history has been informed by several spectacular shipwrecks.
For me this book brought back a lot of memories. I spent around half my childhood in Bay City, on the Oregon coast, and while there my grandmother often took me to Warrenton and Astoria to eat in one of the local cafes or purchase books. I have many fond recollections of things that happened within sight of the Columbia River Bar, and that area will always be special to me.
Aside from triggering a sense of nostalgia, I would say that this book has a lot to recommend it, questionable bestseller status or no. The author, his egocentricity aside, is an engaging guide to the Columbia River Bar, and I never felt bored by his account of all the love, hate, greed and sacrifice that have marked the human effort to bend a river mouth toward commercial activity.
I do think, however, that the "crossing of the Bar" which frames the author's narrative isn't big enough to tie the two other strands of this book together. At the end of the day this crossing, no matter how ill-advised or well-executed, is just two older guys in a little boat, and I don't think the "near death experience" the author relates in this context is very convincing. It certainly isn't convincing enough to bring the whole thing together in the way he intends.
Graveyard of the Pacific reminded me a bit of Barbarian Days, a surfing travelogue I read a while back. Both books show a facility with the language, and both books make a less accessible subject more accessible by offering a "way in" to the subject through the author's conflicted personality. I liked Barbarian Days a lot better, but Graveyard of the Pacific is still very entertaining.
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