Jim Lynch lives with his wife and their daughter in Olympia, Washington. As a journalist, he has received the Livingston Award for Young Journalists, among other national honors. His first novel, The Highest Tide, won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award, appeared on several best seller lists, was adapted for the stage, and has been published in eleven foreign markets.

He is also the author of Border Songs, another novel of nature and individualism set in the Pacific Northwest.

"It's hard to see where you live as exotic, especially if you've never gone away for long. What brought Western Washington alive for me were the dozen years I abandoned it. By the time I crawled back here, the area had been invaded by a half million Californians, but the mountains seemed even larger and Puget Sound was more mesmerizing than ever. I kept kayaking, sailing and beachcombing until a premise and characters arose clearly enough to write my first novel, The Highest Tide."