Sometimes it feels like I spend all day in the car. School drop-offs, pick-ups and errands; thank goodness the price of gas has dropped or I’d be broke. I’ll admit there are days when the thought of one more trip to the grocery store makes me want to scream.
But lately driving the mom-mobile hasn’t seemed so bad. That’s because I’m listening to Daniel James Brown’s bestselling book “The Boys in the Boat” on audio CD. Earlier this year the Everett Public library chose “The Boys in the Boat” for Everett Reads! and brought the author in to speak at the Everett Performing Arts Center. Now I’m kicking myself for not attending. This book is so incredible I wish I read it months ago.
“The Boys in the Boat” tells the story of how nine working-class boys from Washington rowed The Huskie Clipper to gold in the 1936 Olympics. It describes what life was like during the Great Depression and the unthinkable things people did to survive. But most importantly, “The Boys in the Boat” is the story of broken trust and renewed hope.
Listening to the book on audio has additional entertainment value. The narrator is the actor Edward Hermann, who passed away last year from cancer. I’m most familiar with Hermann’s work as the aristocratic grandfather on “The Gilmore Girls.” As the audio-book reader for “The Boys in the Boat,” Hermann gives a stirring performance. He manages to make the most unlikable characters appear sympathetic, and imparts gravitas equal to the subject.
Unfortunately, Hermann seems to have never heard many of our Pacific Northwest names pronounced correctly. He butchers “Skagit,” “Anacortes,” “Chehalis” and more. Herman obviously cares about the story he is reading, so it’s easy to forgive his mistakes. Still, sometimes the mispronunciations are so funny I crack up in the middle of traffic.
A major theme of “The Boys in the Boat” is the East Coast underestimating the West Coast so it’s ironic that the audio book production company didn’t double check our Pacific Northwest pronunciations. Maybe they didn’t even notice.
But I notice, and so has my whole family. The funny mispronunciations are something we chuckle about together.
“Turn on BOB,” my 10-year-old says as soon as I pick him up from fifth grade. BOB is his questionable acronym for “The Boys in the Boat.”
“What’s Thula up to now?” my husband wants to know every evening, referring to the step mother of oarsman Joe Rantz.
“You know I row for North Cascades Crew, right?” my nephew asks. He’s in sixth grade and has read the book too.
The set of 12 CDs has passed from household to household, car to car, as three generations enjoy the same book, grandparents and grandkids included.
So as the U-Dub fight song says, “Bow down to Washington.” It’s almost 80 years later and we are still fascinated by those nine fine men.
Jennifer Bardsley lives in Edmonds.
Her book “Genesis Girl” is scheduled to be released in 2016. Find her online on Instagram @the_ya_gal, Twitter @jennbardsley or at teachingmybabytoread.com.
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