Story behind the Story: Don Winslow’s Dawn Patrol
By Allison Block

“I suck as a surfer,” says San Diego–based novelist Don Winslow, with his trademark self-deprecating wit. The author of acclaimed thrillers The Power of the Dog(2005) and The Winter of Frankie Machine(2006) says he’s been riding the waves for years, but his skill remains next to nil. “If surfing is defined as falling and swimming,” he says, “then I’m world class.”

Winslow’s latest novel, The Dawn Patrol, features a pack of cool San Diego dudes who work for a living but live to hang 10. They have names like Johnny Banzai and Dave the Love God, live on a steady diet of fish tacos, and relish every moment of their early-morning gatherings spent tackling the tides.

The ocean has long fascinated Winslow, who spent his childhood in Rhode Island. “I’ve always thought of it as the great borderless border,” he says. “Growing up on a coast, you look out, and there’s the end of things. The end of land, end of town, end of the country. But it doesn’t end. In one sense, it’s finite; in another sense, it’s infinite.”

The ocean is going to do what it’s going to do, whether you’re there or not, adds Winslow. “You’re so insignificant, compared to that sort of force. It helps put you in your place. At the same time, you can definitely have a relationship with the ocean,” he says. “Sometimes you ride it; sometimes it rides you.”

For Winslow, the dark depths of San Diego’s beautiful deep blue made it the ideal backdrop for The Dawn Patrol. “What attracts me about Southern California is that it’s so pretty on the surface, but there’s this undercurrent, this substrata of crime and violence and economic inequality that sustains that beauty. If you look at the criminal history of the West Coast, you know certain things were built with drug money, or because of the Mob.”

In The Dawn Patrol, Winslow chose the harrowing theme of human trafficking because it stands in stark contrast to the laid-back lifestyle that his hero, Boone Daniels, and his surf bruddas embrace. “I wanted something that forces these guys out of the Peter Pan syndrome that surfing can really epitomize,” he says. “It couldn’t just be marijuana smuggling or a real-estate scam. It needed to be shocking and disturbing on a deeply human level. Something that just rocks you to your core.”