The Lost Boys of Montauk: The True Story of the Wind Blown, Four Men Who Vanished at Sea, and the Survivors They Left Behind

Journalist Fairbanks debuts with a deeply reported and moving account of how a tragedy has affected a Long Island fishing community. In March 1984, the four-man commercial fishing boat Wind Blown disappeared in a nor’easter between Montauk Point and Block Island. Fairbanks sketches how Montauk and other Long Island villages became playgrounds for wealthy New Yorkers who spent summers there, and shows that by the 1980s, soaring property rates pushed commercial fishermen to go farther out to sea in pursuit of more profitable catches. She notes that commercial fishing has “a fatality rate twenty-nine times higher than the average for all other occupations,” and describes the psychological toll on local families through in-depth interviews with relatives and friends of the Wind Blown’s crew members, whose bodies have never been recovered. She notes that all four men had troubled relationships with their fathers, and unearths a family secret that compounded the grief of captain Mike Stedman’s wife and three sons after his death. Fairbanks skillfully folds the socioeconomic issues into her narrative, and brings her subjects, especially Stedman’s widow, Mary, to vivid life. The result is a memorable portrait of loss. (May)