These well-crafted stories are about love and death, danger and risk, and the strong weather and beauty of the Southern and Central California Coast. They're also about the people who hang out along and on the Pacific Ocean. They are athletes and heroes, loners and bums, alcoholics and dopers, environmental crusaders and oil industry developers, fishers, boaters, lifeguards, fighters, and most of all surfers. These people, most of them men, but some notably brave women as well, are individual and memorable because of their strength and because of their flaws. They are all, in one sense or another, swimming in the riptides.