From Kirkus Reviews
The boat in Kelly's (The Season, 1996, etc.) title--a 13-foot juniper-wood shallow-draft hunting skiff--is a springboard for the most delightful of reminiscences: light-footed, droll, its wisdom inferred rather than spoon-fed. What Kelly serves up here is the edifying moments of his life in the military and the timber business. He is the kind of timber cruiser one can only dream for: He respects a bottomland of hardwoods, considering not so much dollars per board foot as its value as a haven for game food (he is also a much-respected author of books on turkey hunting). In the military and the logging business and as a son-in-law, he knew how to keep his mouth shut and learn from the old hands, regardless of their place in the hierarchical setting: He appreciated what it meant to be the boss of a guy known as the Legend, and he learned the value of sensitivity, empathy, courtesy, and consideration--not in any epiphanal fashion, but simply as part of the process, much as readers come to appreciate the woodlands he cruises. For in Kelly's hands the unadorned naming of tree species--sweet bay, black gum, longleaf pine, water oak--is like music; he wrings an entire visual landscape from something as simple as ``a mixed stand of 50-year-old pine and hardwood with a closed crown.'' There is much more: forays into the history of American lumbering, a passing note on lid drinkers (those who chuck the cap after opening the bottle), why there were so few artillerymen in the artillery, the finer qualities of the Atlantic white cedar, the contours of the southern US sawmill business, the joys of being an official remittance man. And he makes a boat, too, an object loved and full of memories. Kelly spins gold from straw, a world from every mile he tramps and rows. --
Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
From the Back Cover
Almost every man feels the burning urge once in his life to build his own wooden boat. In his newest book, Tom Kelly strays - though not too far - from wild turkeys to narrate the story behind his handmade boat, whose primary purpose was 'that of moving a hunter across bodies of water of one size or another, to reduce the distance between the gun and the game.' Since the construction of this boat coincides with Kelly's career in the timber industry, his humorous narrative embraces both. Along the way we meet classic Kelly characters - people with whom he worked, with whom he served in the military, and those he simply ran into. Each person inadvertently affected Kelly's boat by donating parts, offering unwanted construction advice, sharing trips in the finished product, or, in the end, actually acquiring it, when Kelly finally caved in and bought a 'beaver-proof' fiberglass boat. Both hilarious and knowledgeable, The Boat will teach the reader about work, war, friendship, and the importance of building one's own boat. (6 1/4 X 9 1/4, 164 pages)
