Chapter 1 - First Race

Harvard rowers listen to the rhythmic splashing of water and roar of the motorboat as their two gleaming red Harvard racing shells move upriver on the Charles towards the starting line. 

It is 8:00, Thursday morning, August 1st, 1968, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. 

A 2,000-meter race is about to start.

The sun is just coming up, and rowers really can’t make out the shoreline yet. As they move through fog and into the wind, each boy feels little water droplets on his face. 

They are all seniors. In a few months, Harvard will send one of these boats to Mexico to compete in the 1968 Olympic Games.

What is The Harvard Boat to Mexico?

The Harvard Boat to Mexico… a historical & transformative novel

In 1968, as war rages in Vietnam and protests shake the globe, three young men at Harvard with troubled pasts—Jamal, a gifted Black from Memphis; Frank Luis, a Chicano activist from California; and Gordie, the privileged son of a Harvard legacy fight for a seat on the university's Olympic rowing team. When Jamal falls in love with Amy, a white Radcliffe journalist covering the team, their romance becomes a flashpoint in a year already on fire. As the Games near—and the massacre of 300 Mexican students by the Army stuns the world, each rower and Amy must decide whether to continue and what loyalty means—to the team, to their beliefs, and themselves.