The Shaper follows Medford Haley, a master surfboard designer whose life is shaped as much by the waves he rides as the ghosts he carries. From a turbulent childhood marked by his father’s brutality and racial shame, Medford inherits both his Sioux grandmother’s spiritual depth and his grandfather’s belief that “big men build things.” Surfing becomes his salvation—his communion with nature and defiance of a world intent on ownership and destruction.

Set against the luminous backdrops of Hawaii, California, and Noosa, Australia, the novel begins with Medford’s escape from the Vietnam draft and unfolds into a sweeping saga of freedom, craftsmanship, and moral courage. His early years are haunted by violence and injustice—a brutal plantation assault, racial prejudice, and exile—but also defined by his obsession with shaping perfect boards to fit perfect lines on the ocean’s face.

In Noosa, he finds love with Honey, a fellow surfer and artist, and a sanctuary where waves meet artistry. Through her, and through shaping boards that embody his philosophy of balance, Medford carves meaning from the chaos of a divided world. Yet his peace is tested by the arrival of Danny Clelland, a brash young pro-surfer seeking the secret of Medford’s legendary boards. Their confrontation becomes a generational mirror—youthful ego colliding with earned wisdom, competition giving way to mentorship, and modern excess meeting soulful craft.

Davis writes in a lyrical, muscular style—part memoir, part philosophical travelogue—immersing readers in salt, resin, and revelation. The Shaper is more than a surfing novel; it’s a meditation on art, rebellion, belonging, and the search for transcendence in a world that commodifies the sacred.

Genre: Action Thriller

Buy on Amazon as paperback and ebook – The Shaper (The Medford Haley Series Book 1)
Nov 29, 2019

Mom was a Democrat – My father was a Republican.

Mom was half Sioux and he was all settler.

I can still feel the sting of his hand and his snarling “TOO GOD DAMNED MUCH INDIAN IN YOU!” whenever he didn’t feel I hadn’t managed to live-up to or perform to his understandably high, white/Protestant expectations.

He was referring of course, to: Gramma Lil’s full blood Lakota-Sioux heritage; which he found so repellent that the word full curled his lip like a junk-yard dog’s and implied some kind of mongrel-taint or stagnation in our gene pool – Something that’d have to be beaten or bred out of us as quickly as possible.

To further express his shame at any stain in our blood; he even went as far as to suppress our own knowledge of it by lopping every branch and bud from that side of the family tree and forbidding us to ever mention it again.

On top of that, he treated us kids like wild animals, whose spirits had to be broken in order to submit-to and be reconstituted in his own image of what he thought we should be, by his superior white-will and intellect.

Sadly, all he managed to do was create an atmosphere of fear and distrust instead of the love and loyalty that bound most families.

He was a timber-cutter when I was born – A stout Protestant man with a sharp intellect and keen mind. He was also a bully and a bigot of the highest order -– Even animals sensed his contempt and couldn’t help but cower or hang their heads in his presence – always eyeing him warily and usually moving to avoid him altogether. There’s no doubt in my mind that if he’d ever have fallen off his horse on one of his timber surveys, it would’ve abandoned him in a second, horse-chuckling all the way home.

I guess that Sioux Nation’s blood explains why I have a slightly different take on most things. Why I see mankind divided into two distinct groups: Not so much the ‘haves’ who’d own the land, understanding it to be something to be bent or coerced to their will above all else and’ have-nots’ who see themselves as belonging to the land – A small but integral part of its magnificent grit and life force. It’s a world I’ve tried to pass through leaving as little physical evidence of my passing as possible.

It was no surprise then; that his severely pruned version of our family tree had a peculiar lean and swayed dangerously in the lightest of breezes. No wonder then, that the first real blow twisted that perverted representation of our family right out of the ground, scattering splinters and damaged fruit to the far corners of the so-called civilized world – Which probably goes a long way to explain why I don’t suffer fools or tolerate any form of ‘pig-ignorance’ any more.

Luckily for me, Gramps, Mom’s father, was there when Dad wasn’t. Gramps used to say, “Big men build things – It’s little men that tear ‘em down.” My father was a big man, so I assumed that he built things.

Wrong: He never built anything without first destroying or tearing something down or at the very least visibly exerting his will upon it somehow and it was never pretty or aesthetic – Always vain and vulgar. He’d see a beautiful stand of trees and say, “It’s absolutely worthless til it’s cut, milled’n sold.” Mom saw it as destroying some of God’s finest work. My father was a big man who tore things down – And my Gramps was a small man who dreamed big and then lived his dreams.

You can’t buy that kind of joy or twinkle in the eye – You can’t even describe it. You have to live it.

Perhaps that’s even the factor that made me a good surfer, more comfortable with the natural rhythms of nature than the calculating and capricious company of modern or European man: conqueror, exploiter and sadly, unconscionable destroyer –That and the fact that my father was petrified of the water. Surfing: By its very nature, is that gravity-bereft, fine-line between sublime joy and abject failure. In art it’s that place where what-is becomes what could-be. Now you see it – Now you don’t: The very essence of our perceptions, known as the vanishing point.

Medford Haley

Noosa Heads, Queensland

Australia

🌊 Metadata Foundations

Title: The Shaper
Series: Medford Haley Chronicles – Book One
Author: Mike Davis
Genre: Surf Fiction / Literary Fiction / Adventure

Themes & Keywords: surfboard shaper, surfing novel, ocean philosophy, craftsmanship, freedom, Hawaii 1960s, Vietnam War exile, spiritual adventure, generational wisdom, Australian surf culture, coastal life, self-discovery

Tone: Reflective, cinematic, poetic, and character-driven

🛠️Amazon KDP

Short Description (200 words):
From Hawaii’s reefs to Australia’s wild Noosa points, The Shaper traces the life of Medford Haley—a surfer, craftsman, and wanderer who finds purpose in shaping both boards and destiny. Escaping the Vietnam draft, Medford rides out life’s tempests—racism, exile, and loss—through a devotion to surfing as sacred art. When a brash young pro-surfer invades his peace, their clash becomes a test of legacy, mentorship, and what it means to truly ride the line between control and surrender. The Shaper is an ode to the soul of surfing, written in the salt-stung prose of a man who’s lived it.

Categories / BISAC Codes:

FIC019000 — Fiction / Literary
FIC002000 — Fiction / Action & Adventure
FIC079000 — Fiction / Sports
FIC014000 — Fiction / Coming of Age

Target Audience:
Fans of Tim Winton (Breath), Kem Nunn (Tapping the Source), Jack London’s seafaring fiction, and readers drawn to stories of self-reliance, artistry, and redemption.

Amazon Keywords:
surf novel, literary surf fiction, Australian surf culture, board shaping, ocean spirituality, Vietnam War draft exile, coming of age surf story, Noosa surf, 1970s surfing, coastal adventure novel, mentorship, generational wisdom, Mike Davis

📚 Goodreads Copy

Tagline:
“Between craft and chaos lies the perfect wave.”

Blurb:
A soulful, salt-sprayed odyssey through love, loss, and the art of shaping. Mike Davis’s The Shaper captures the beauty and brutality of a life lived by the tides—where every board, like every man, carries the story of its maker.