Summary
Chapter 1 opens with scenes from the Depression in Seattle, Washington. It shifts to the University of Washington, where students arrived for the beginning of the semester and a group of freshmen boys assembled at the boat house to compete for spots on the freshmen boys crew team. One of the boys was Joe Rantz, who was visibly of a lower class than the others, dressed in hand-me-down clothes like a rumpled sweater and ill-fitting pants. He desperately wanted to make the team and believed his future depended on it. While being a member of the team would not mean he had a scholarship for his classes, it would guarantee him a part-time job, the earnings from which would allow him to barely manage to afford his tuition and living expenses.
The coach of the University of Washington team, Al Ulbrickson, is introduced here as well. He was dressed in a suit and had a Phi Betta Kappa ring, which he used to distinguish himself from the rest of the boys as he was only 30 years old. He had been building the reputation of the University of Washington’s program, which did not have much respect beyond the West Coast. Rowing was a popular sport at the time of the Depression, but it was dominated by elite East Coast schools, such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, and Cornell. The University of Washington had attracted crowds in its competitions with the University of California, Berkeley, but it was dominated by Berkeley in 1932. Though Washington regrouped for the 1933 season, Ulbrickson wanted more for his team.
While the stage is set in Washington, the chapter briefly moves to what was occurring in Germany, where Hitler and his advisers were preparing for the 1936 Olympics that Germany was hosting. The mission of the games, athletes of all nationalities and creeds coming together to compete, was antithetical to Hitler’s party’s mission, but one of his advisers convinced him that it was an important public relations opportunity.
Chapter 2 centers on Joe Rantz’s early life. His mother died when he was four from throat cancer and his father fled to Canada after her death out of grief and desperation. Joe was sent to live with his aunt in Pennsylvania, making a cross-country train trip by himself at age five. He had scarlet fever shortly after arriving at his aunt’s, and he was filled with a sense of loneliness and desperation while he suffered at a young age with a woman he barely knew. His brother, Fred, stayed in Washington, and called for Joe after he finished college. Joe journeyed back across the country to live with Fred and his new wife. Shortly after Joe returned to the west, his father returned from Canada, and he promptly married Fred’s wife’s twin sister. Joe was sent to live with his father and his new, much younger wife, both of whom Joe barely knew. Joe’s difficulties continued—his father bounced around different jobs, their house burned, and they eventually ended up in a mining camp town, where his step-mother's resentment towards him grew with each day. Eventually, his stepmother forced his father to choose between her or Joe, and Joe’s father chose his wife, striking a deal with the school teacher that Joe could sleep in the school house if he chopped enough wood to keep it warm. In addition to chopping wood, Joe had to work for the local cook in exchange for breakfast and dinner.
Chapter 3 introduces the reader to more of the mechanics and demands of rowing—the pain that a rower will experience over the course of a race or training session. In exchange for the pain, however, the rower may experience moments of transcendence and feeling closer to a higher being. Coach Bolles elaborated on some of this in his pre-practice speeches, while the team’s boat builder, George Yeoman Pocock watched on. Pocock was born in England on the Thames and had rowing in his blood. He was an accomplished boat builder and rower himself, and many of the truisms that Coach Bolles told the boys were from Pocock’s perspective. The difficulty of the sport was taking its toll on the boys who were trying out for the team, and each day Joe saw fewer of them walking towards the boathouse.
In Chapter 4, more details of Joe’s difficult upbringing emerge. He was abandoned by his father and step-mother again, this time left to care for a half-constructed house that his father never completed. Joe rose to the challenge and made a life for himself there, learning how to protect the chickens from predators, catch and cure fish for money and supplies, and fell trees for logging. In Sequim, he began to build a community and met Joyce Simdars, who would later become his wife. Despite the life that Joe had made for himself in Sequim, he realized that he wanted more than the small town could offer, and he went to live with his brother Fred in Seattle when Fred reached out to him. Joe was able to focus on school in Seattle while his brother took care of the rest, and Joe did well at Roosevelt High School, earning a place on the honor roll. At the end of the school year, Joe returned to Sequim to earn money before enrolling at the University of Washington, and he proposed to Joyce at the end of the summer.
In Chapter 5, we return to the University of Washington’s crew team, who was continuing to work exceptionally hard. The prospects had narrowed from 175 to under 100, and Joe and Roger Morris were still in contention. Both of them had demanding schedules, balancing their courses with two part time jobs. Joe continued to struggle with the classism of his teammates, who made fun of the sweater he wore every day. It was the only sweater that Joe owned. At the end of November and on the final day of practice for the fall semester, Coach Bolles told the boys that they would be announcing the line-ups for the first and second boats, beginning with the roster for the second boat. Neither Joe nor Roger heard their names called for the second boat roster, but they were able to breathe a sigh of relief when they were both listed as members of the first boat. The first boat took the boat out for a celebratory row upon hearing the news. Outside of the University, the Dust Bowl was ravaging communities in the middle of the country, and Seattle experienced rain like it had never experienced before.
Analysis
Chapter 1 clearly sets the stage of the national mood: the United States is in the midst of the Depression, and people everywhere are struggling to make ends meet. One person in particular, Joe Rantz, is depending on a spot on the rowing team to avoid a spot in the soup kitchen line. From the beginning of the chapter, it’s clear that Joe will be a central character of the book moving forward. Brown also begins to describe the global context with the rise of Hitler, his dismantling of the free press in Germany, and the basic tenets of his political party’s beliefs: that Aryans are the superior race of man. Germany and Hitler are set to host the 1934 Olympics, which Washington’s coach is aiming to compete in with his boat.
This chapter also provides important contextual background that the reader may not be as familiar with: rowing, at the time, is a popular sport. Even with sports figures such as Babe Ruth, people know and cheer for specific rowers, and they even collect trading cards for their favorite teams. There are rivalries, such as University of California and University of Washington, and there are also divisions within the rowing world that are based on prestige and class: teams such as Harvard, Yale, and Princeton have storied histories and respect across the world, but most people don’t think about the University of Washington outside of the western part of the United States.
Chapter 2 is a sad retelling of Joe’s early life, and the number and intensity of hardships he faces are incredible for such a young man. As hinted at in Chapter 1, Joe will be a central character of the remainder of the book. He is positioned here as the protagonist and within the arc of a hero; Chapter 2 sets up the many challenges he has faced and is in the process of overcoming. Despite the sadness of the chapter, it ends with a hopeful quote after Joe realizes there is edible food growing on stumps in the woods. “If you simply kept your eyes open, it seemed, you just might find something valuable in the most unlikely of places. The trick was to recognize a good thing when you saw it, no matter how odd or worthless it might at first appear, no matter who else might just walk away and leave it behind” (37).
After explaining the difficulty of Joe’s upbringing, the book shifts towards the difficulty of rowing. The juxtaposition communicates to the reader that Joe is well-suited for rowing and rowing is well-suited for Joe. In exchange for all of the difficulty, however, there is something wonderful waiting for the rowers that expose themselves to pain and ruin: a feeling of belonging and a sense of purpose that extends beyond the self.
Joe and Joyce’s love is foreshadowed as a wonderful and strong love between two dedicated and hardworking people. They are able to see the difficulties that each has experienced, and they choose to focus on the ways in which each has responded to their circumstances rather than let them be defined by their circumstances. It’s clear from Part 1 that they will have a great love story that threads throughout the book.
