A new book by Randall Sullivan examines the notorious waterways at the mouth of the Columbia River.

“Graveyard of the Pacific,” published by Atlantic Monthly Press, combines maritime history, adventure journalism and memoir to comb through the depths of the Columbia River Bar, one of the most infamous stretches of water in the world.

But this did not deter Sullivan, who endeavored to cross the bar with a friend in a two-man kayak, just shy of their 70th birthdays.

Two thousand ships have been wrecked on the bar since the first European vessels attempted to cross in 1792. For decades, ships continued to make the bar crossing with great peril, first with Native guides. As Europeans settled in the Northwest, they displaced coastal Indigenous tribes and transformed the river into the hub of a booming region.

Since then, the commercial importance of the Columbia River has only grown, and despite the construction of jetties on either side, the bar remains treacherous.

Sullivan and his friend’s plan to cross the Columbia River Bar by kayak was met with skepticism and concern. But on a clear July day, when the tides and weather aligned, the two embarked.

As they plunged through the currents that had taken so many lives, Sullivan commemorated the brave sailors that made the crossing before him — including his abusive father, a sailor who also once dared to cross the bar.

With exhaustive research and a propulsive narrative, “Graveyard of the Pacific” follows historical shipwrecks through the moment-by-moment details that often determined whether sailors would live or die, exposing how boats, sailors and navigation have changed over the decades.

As he makes his way across the bar, floating above the wrecks and across the same currents that have taken so many lives, Sullivan faces the past, in his own life and on the Columbia River Bar.

“The Columbia Bar has loomed large in my imagination since I was a young boy,” Sullivan said. “My father had been a sailor and his most frightening experience at sea had taken place there, so as a kid, I thought of it as a terrifying and epic place.”

Sullivan grew up and left the Oregon Coast behind for New York City and Los Angeles, where he had a remarkable career as a journalist and writer. He wrote for decades for Rolling Stone, worked on a network show and served as a war correspondent in Bosnia. Three of his books have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize.

However, none of his previous work required the personal vulnerability of this current project, he said. When Sullivan moved back to the Oregon Coast later in life, he found his mind returning to the treacherous Columbia River Bar, as if pulled by the tides.

He had long wanted to write about a close friend, Ray, who had experienced a parallel childhood of physical abuse and a resulting twin desire to exert mastery over the physical elements in extreme situations.

The threads of a story began to weave themselves together in Sullivan’s imagination, one that would connect the history of the bar, Ray’s shared friendship and thirst for adventure and catastrophes long buried in the depths of the past.

The first draft of the book focused more on Ray’s childhood than Sullivan’s, but his editor told him to go back and expand the most personal sections. Sullivan returned to the manuscript in what he said was some of the most emotional and difficult writing of his life.

Ultimately, he sought to present a loving but truthful portrait of a fraught relationship with his father, realizing as he did so that he was telling a common story for men of his generation.

“Many baby boomers,” Sullivan said, “were raised by men who were violent with them. They were shaped by that violence but chose not to continue it. They broke the cycle and learned how to separate the toxic from the masculine.”

Sullivan’s book, in many ways, is a meditation on this very separation. “Of all my books,” Sullivan said, “this is the most personal and the most true.”

By Randall Sullivan

Atlantic Monthly Press – 272 pp — $30

Astoria Library talk and signing at 6 p.m. June 29, signing party at By The Way in Gearhart from 4 to 6 p.m. July 1 and signing from 2 to 4 p.m. at Cannon Beach Book Co.