Winds of Santa Ana is a spiritual history, environmental study, and sailing memoir of Southern California's coast, islands, and waters.

"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