Winds of Santa Ana is a spiritual history, environmental study, and sailing memoir of Southern California's coast, islands, and waters.
Rick Kennedy is professor of history and environmental studies at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego. He is author of Jesus, History, and Mount Darwin: An Academic Excursion (2008) and The First American Evangelical: A Short Life of Cotton Mather.
“This amazing personal account fuses a maritime perspective with considerable historical knowledge of the region from the Spanish period to the present. Kennedy presents his subject in an innovative spiritual light that changed my view of what it meant to grow up in the fertile religious environment of Southern California.”
—Jarrell C. Jackman, retired CEO, Santa Barbara Trust for Historic Preservation
“Narrated with the salty wisdom of a storytelling sailor and the seasoned eye of a historian, Winds of Santa Ana offers an abundance of riches for the reader. With a revitalizing, evangelical consciousness—distinctively Californian and dynamically erudite—Kennedy’s journey as a sailor-scholar aboard his beloved boat, Boethius, is a hopeful consolation for our generation, and a good reminder of our theological roots. This book is both timely and delightful.”
—Karen An-Hwei Lee, Wheaton College
“There is no better guide to the California Bight, its natural beauty, human history, and spiritual potential than Rick Kennedy, a pilgrim who has sailed its shores for decades. Read this book and see its wonders through the eyes of Rick’s heart. You will never be the same.”
—Douglas Sweeney, Beeson Divinity School
“Kennedy is not only a gifted academic historian, he is also a pilgrim-sailor with the head of a philosopher, the heart of a Christian mystic, and the soul of a poet. These traits are wonderfully on display in this imaginative and enchanting book. . . . Winds of Santa Ana nurtures the spiritual imagination. It is a book for those longing for a thicker description of nature, the past, and life than the reductive methodologies of the modern academy offer.”
—Donald A. Yerxa, former Editor, Historically Speaking
“This book will be appealing to readers on several scores: those interested in the environmental, maritime history of the San Diego area and those interested in how a noted Christian historian weaves the religious history of the region into a unique connection to the sea and the vocation of sailing.”
—Ronald A. Wells, Calvin University, emeritus
“To sail into the waters of Rick Kennedy’s memoir, Winds of Santa Ana, is to voyage with a most affable, engaging captain. Part philosopher, part sage, part poet, Kennedy approaches his audience as a friend in his invitation to apprehend rich interior and exterior seas and landscapes.”
—Kay Harkins, author of Queen of the Leaves: A Memoir of Lost and Found
“Nobody tells the story of Southern California like Rick Kennedy. Winds of Santa Ana expounds his own experience of the place—in his case, the bight, seen from his nautical, sojourning, historian’s eyes looking at the coast of Southern California from the water. . . . Seen through his vessel Boethius and accompanied by the personified Philosophia for the journey, this book is a true love letter to the Southern California coast.”
—Jason S. Sexton, UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability
“Kennedy’s ruminations on the California Bight present a Christian spiritual topography of the Los Angeles Basin and its environs. . . . This sailor-pilgrim reflects on his vocation, the evangelical cause, and the interplay of place and faith in the Bight. This fine memoir uses Kennedy’s life journey and evocations of the Mediterranean to describe the islands and coastlines, winds and waves as the means and fruits of Christian yearning for God’s presence in the world.”
—Glenn Sanders, King University