The Width of the Sea - Softcover

Chalfoun, Michelle

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0385602065 ISBN 13: 9780385602068

Publisher: Doubleday, 2001

Synopsis

Cod fishing supported the New England town of Rosaline -- and the Albin and Fitz families -- for generations.Now the cod are nearly gone and, with tourism taking over the waterfront, the government wants fishermen to stay off the seas.

Chris Albin and John Fitz, friends since childhood, will lose everything if they quit fishing -- their boat, incomes, and futures. While both Chris' marriage and John's relationship with Yve Albin, Chris's sister, begin to unravel, the two young men devise a desperate plan: one last dangerous, very illegal voyage to an island off the coast of Newfoundland. Avoiding capture will take luck and skill, but getting back whole, in body and spirit, will take a miracle.

About this title

About the Author:

Michelle Chalfoun has worked in the circus as a roustabout, on boats as a deckhand and cook, and in shipyards as maintenance and repair crew. She divides her time between New England and the Puget Sound.

From Publishers Weekly:

Earnest and closely observed, Chalfoun's second novel (after Roustabout) chronicles the lives of a small crew of fishermen and their families, who endure the demise of the fishing industry. Times are tough in the fictional New England town of Rosaline. The seas are overfished; the reconstruction of an antique schooner, the Shardon Rose, forces the fishermen off the piers; and the government announces an Emergency Buyback Package, which encourages fishermen to scuttle their boats and quit the business. Struggling to make it are the men of the Pearl, a fishing vessel owned by Warren Fitz and crewed in part by his son, John, and John's best friend, Chris Albin. Pride-bound, Warren Fitz is loathe to take "The Package," so John prodded by Chris, a longtime but functioning junkie tries to run drugs from one of the French islands off the coast of Newfoundland. It's here, as Chalfoun sets her characters on a collision course, that the novel's slowly churning engine kicks in and builds real, satisfying momentum. Chalfoun who has worked on boats and in shipyards has a strong documentary impulse. She takes great pains to represent every angle of the fishing economy and is careful to portray in exacting detail her characters' every action. Unfortunately, the surfeit of facts obscures more than it reveals. Chalfoun's dialogue has an authentic ring, however, and character dynamics are convincing. While she tends to hammer home each point, those hungry for an accurate, if glum, picture of the New England fishing industry will find this unblinking novel compelling. (May)Forecast: Chalfoun may emerge on readers' radar when the movie version of Roustabout, starring Winona Ryder, is released by New Line Cinema.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Doubleday
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0385602065
• ISBN 13: 9780385602068
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320