In late January 1998, after a miserable stretch of fishing that hadn't even paid for their groceries, the five-man crew of an Alaska schooner risked one last run despite the approach of bad weather. They hit the mother lode - but stayed out too long. Todd Lewan's painstaking investigation into the events that followed provides a timeless, affecting portrait of hard-living seekers drawn to Alaska in search of roots, home, and the chance to remake themselves.
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Todd Lewan joined the Associated Press as a correspondent in 1988. In 1996 he became an editor on AP's international desk, and later a national features writer. In 1998 he received several feature-writing prizes for this story.
Associated Press reporter Lewan offers a taut retelling of the 1998 story of five fishermen whose aging boat sank during an angry storm off the coast of Alaska, and of the predictably nail-biting Coast Guard rescue mission that followed. He capably explores the backgrounds and motivations of not only the small group of deckhands and their green skipper but also of their rescuers via helicopter, recreating believable dialogue and vividly evoking life on the harsh Alaskan coastline. He admirably resists the natural urge to overplay (toward the heroic) the fishermen's actions and unflinchingly looks at their alcoholism, marital discord and epic bouts of bad luck. They're not ennobled by their struggles, but rather simply challenged, changed and, in some cases, broken. But while Lewan focuses on the internal difficulties the men faced on their journey, he skimps on a detailed explanation of the role that overfishing played in the crew's decision to search out distant, more dangerous waters in their attempts to bring home a profitable-enough catch. Nonetheless, the book's flowing style and measured pacing succeed in making a familiar tale (fishermen go out, boat sinks, some don't make it) new and immediate, and in giving readers a sense of why the five fishermen were willing to risk so much for potentially so little.
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