Bibliophiles have gathered for the past 21 years to listen to best-selling authors—of both fiction and nonfiction—at the Nick Linn Lecture Series. The lectures take place from January through March and are the main fundraiser for the Friends of the Library of Collier County, incorporated 65 years ago to establish and maintain a free public library system within the county.
Three authors have participated in the 2024 Nonfiction Author Series, separate from the Nick Linn Lecture Series. The fourth and final author of this year’s nonfiction series, journalist Amanda Fairbanks, will speak on March 18. Fairbanks, author of The Lost Boys of Montauk: The True Story of the Wind Blown, Four Men Who Vanished at Sea, and the Survivors They Left Behind, chronicles the offshore voyage taken by four men from Montauk Harbor, New York, in March 1984 on a commercial fishing boat. The boat disappeared, and the bodies of its crew were never recovered. Fairbanks details the disappearance of the boat and discusses how the community was deeply affected by the tragedy. Naples Illustrated asked Fairbanks a few questions about her first book; read on for a brief Q&A.
NI: Why did you choose to explore the story of the missing boat and men and write about it?
Fairbanks: I first learned of this story while working as a reporter at The East Hampton Star, a small, family-owned newspaper in East Hampton, New York. My then-editor shared the story—one that he had a personal connection to—and while he always wanted to write something about it, he felt he was too close [to the incident] to do so.
From very first conversations about the story—in particular with the captain’s widow—I felt a deep, strangely personal tie to the narrative. I felt a compulsion to tell it. I eventually became obsessed with so many facets of the story; the narrative spun out in more directions than I could have possibly predicted at the outset.
While I grew up in Southern California, as soon as I landed on the East Coast for college, my soul felt like it had finally come home. I think part of wanting to tell this story was to get a better sense of the place where I decided to settle and where my husband and I are raising our two children. I now have a deep appreciation and reverence for the area’s history and its people.
How long did it take to research (including any interviews), compile, and write this book?
It took more than four years from start to finish. I began reporting what became The Lost Boys of Montauk in the summer of 2017. I sold the book proposal (then-titled The Wind Blown) to my editor at Simon & Schuster in the winter of 2018. It finally came out in May of 2021.
You record the events of this tragedy while also delving into the lives of the four main characters as if you are attempting to solve a mystery. Were you hoping to uncover new information or clues? Did you think you might solve the mystery?
At one point, on a wall in my office, I taped up a bunch of different materials that spun out like a spiderweb—trying to piece the story together. The inciting incident, the fact that these four beautiful, young men were lost at sea, is the drama at the core of the book. As I dove into the details, I became more fascinated with getting to know how this particular foursome found themselves on the same vessel, particularly given their divergent class backgrounds, in addition to getting to know the women (the widow, the mothers, and the girlfriends) they left behind and the families forever altered as a result of never finding these lost men, to say nothing of the grief and loss that undergirds this story.
After four years and more than 100 interviews, I never really solved the case. The men were alive and making radio contact before a ferocious storm pulled them under. They simply vanished.
Will you be writing more books?
I’m currently at work on my second nonfiction book: The Last Aristocrats. Broadly speaking, it’s about Gardiners Island, a privately held island owned by the same family for 16 generations and counting.
It’s supposed to come out in the summer of 2025, but I have a lot of work ahead of me. When I sold the book, based on the first layer of reporting, I certainly underestimated not only the volume of archival material but also what it means to condense a family saga that spans some 400 years. The family that currently owns the island is apparently not pleased that I’m writing it, which certainly complicates matters since they aren’t cooperating, but it also adds to the mystery and allure of it all.
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