In this thrilling and candid memoir, world record-holding Big-Wave surfer Garrett McNamara chronicles his unlikely and harrowing journey to become one of the elite athletes who ride the most formidable waves on earth.

Garrett McNamara set a world record when he surfed a seventy-eight-foot wave in Nazaré, Portugal, in 2011, a record he smashed three years later at the same break. Propelled by the challenge and the rush, McNamara travels the globe to ride the most dangerous waves, from giant barrels breaking on shallow, jagged reefs to massive, open ocean hurricane swells.

But what motivates McNamara to go to such extremes-to risk everything for one thrilling ride Is catching giant waves the ultimate exercise in control or surrender

Through his compelling and emotional memoir, readers will get to know McNamara as never before, seeing for the first time the personal alongside the professional in an exciting look at what drives this inventive, iconoclastic man. Surfing awesome giants isn't just thrill seeking, he explains-it's about vanquishing fears and defeating obstacles past and present. Surfers and nonsurfers alike will embrace McNamara's story-as they have William Finnegan's Barbarian Days-for an intimate take on the enigmatic pursuit of riding waves, big and small.

Thoughtful, suspenseful, and spiritually profound, Hound of the Sea is a testament to perseverance, passion, and healing. McNamara reveals the beautiful soul of surfing through the eyes of one of its most daring and devoted disciples.