The Boys in the Boat

Brown returns to Joe’s childhood. In 1924, Thula goes into labor with her third child, Rose, and after a harrowing delivery declares that she is done with the mining camp. Harry picks Joe up from the schoolhouse, and the whole family moves into Thula’s parents’ house in Seattle. Harry gets a job as a mechanic with a nearby logging company and places Joe with a local family. The Rantzes eventually move to Sequim, a small and welcoming town on the prairie, where Harry builds a house for the family. Joe, now a teenager, thrives at school, quickly becoming popular and catching the eye of Joyce Simdars, a pretty girl with “a fetching smile” (56). Thula is still miserable, as “farm life appalled her” (56).

It is 1929, and the stock market crashes, ushering in the Great Depression. Shortly afterward, Harry, Thula, and their children pick up and leave Sequim. Harry informs Joe that he can’t come with them, and they leave Joe behind in the house. He is 15 years old. Joe quickly learns to survive on his own, foraging and poaching his food, and making extra money logging. He begins to date Joyce. To Joyce, who comes from a religious and “austere” family (63), Joe seems “the very embodiment of freedom” (65).

Joe receives a letter from his estranged and much older brother Fred, inviting him to live in Seattle with Fred and his wife (who is Thula’s twin sister) so he can complete his senior year at the “highly regarded” (66) Roosevelt High School. Though Joe is wary of Fred’s pompous interference, he agrees. Suddenly well-fed and no longer needing to work another job, Joe excels in school, earning excellent grades. While doing gymnastics in the school gym, he is approached by Ulbrickson, who urges him to try out for the rowing team if he makes it into the University of Washington. After graduating high school with honors, Joe returns to Sequim to save money for his freshman year at Washington.

Joe also proposes to Joyce. Having always had “an uncanny knack for finding four-leaf clovers” (68), a talent that mystifies Joyce, Joe proposes using the ruse of a four-leaf clover hunt. To Joyce’s surprise, he holds not a clover in his hand but a diamond ring. She accepts.

In 1933, the freshman recruits have been “whittled down to 80 boys” (71), and freshman coach Tom Bolles decides to move the best out of Old Nero and into a real boat. Joe and Roger are among those chosen. Joyce has moved to Seattle to be with Joe and pursue her own education, and she and Joe combine their studies with part-time jobs. Joe works as a janitor, and Joyce as a maid for a wealthy family.

In mid-November, the annual homecoming game against the University of Oregon is on the horizon. In the larger world, the Midwest is plagued by dust storms, and Hitler quits the League of Nations, but most Americans remain firmly on the side on noninvolvement in European affairs. As Brown writes, “99 percent said no” (77).

In late November, selections are made for the freshman, JV, and varsity boats. Both Roger and Joe make the freshman boat, and though the selections are only preliminary, they are pleased and join their new boatmates for a “celebratory row” (78). Rowing in the calm, dark water, Joe’s eyes tear up. Though he doesn’t “know where the tears had come from,” he can sense “something inside him had shifted, if only for a few moments” (79).