The Maine Lobster Book

This book is distilled from the humor, sadness, and pride of the Maine lobster fishery, and it is concocted from herring heads, deathly cold nor'easters, and multi-colored buoys bobbing like small pots of gold in the length and breadth of a summer day on the coast of Maine. It is flavored with a thick and buttery stew steaming on a cast-iron stove, and with the compelling taste and inscrutable habits of a weird and wonderful creature from a watery world. This is a series of snapshots of life in a lobster-fishing community and in the lobster's ocean-bottom lair, a collage of hilarity, sobriety, and expectations made good or gone sour. It is a look at lobstermen like those you might be proud to meet in Port Clyde, Stonington, or Winter Harbor. It is a brief but thoroughly enjoyable excursion, a chance to sit in on a game in which the lobster might be holding all the aces, the bureaucrat is dealing from a stacked deck, the lobsterman has something up his sleeve, and none of them is folding.