Customer Reviews

Breakers: A Novel about the Commercial Fishermen of Alaska

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Hank McCloskey is a man torn between his love of the sea and fishing with the love of his family. His wife Jody fished the seas with him until they started their family. Three children later, Hank feels a distance growing between them and his desire to be at sea. Trouble comes in patches, Hank over extends their finances by buying a new boat and building a new house. Suddenly their baby boy becomes ill on the heels of a devasting season of crabbing. Faced with mounting debts and pressures, Hank must decide whether to join forces with the Japanese knowing this will strain friendships with other skippers or facing the possible loss of his boat. He is put to the test business wise and personal wise. This book did a great job of getting you to feel and experience the love of the sea fisherman have. I liked the depth and exploration into Hank and Jody's relationship. I'm a land locked Midwesterner who fell in love with this book. Enjoy!

I just finished BREAKERS and while driving to Thanksgiving dinner, I realized why Hank Crawford and his exploits are so compelling to me. He's Ishmael and Billy Budd thrown together (like Conrad's Secret Sharers) and flung head-long into the chaos, carnage and maelstrom of Alaska's greatest offshore boom-and-bust.

McCloskey puts you in the skin of these high seas cowboys, addicted to the thrill of the chase across storm-swept seas and the endless tug-of-between themselves and their buyers, clever, Oriental and Occidental businessmen who always seem to stay one, strategic step ahead of the fishermen.

You want to feel the anxiety, joy, despair, fear, panic, disappointment, loneliness and determination that Alaska's offshore fishermen lived with twenty years ago? Pick-up BREAKERS and give McCloskey your imagination, curiosity and taste for adventure for just a few hours. He'll take care of the rest.

I know it's 100-years too late to prove it. But I think Herman Melville, himself, would give you the same advice after he reviewed BREAKERS. So see for yourself if Hank Crawford has become the re-incarnation of Ishmael and Budd in modern, American literature...and, at the same time, buckle yourself in for one hell of a Nantucket sleigh ride.

This is a continuation from the book highliners and the life of hank crawford.This continues to follow hank as his family grows and he takes on further progress by purchasing a bigger and better boat but along with this comes more bills to pay and eventually some tough decision which may be good for business and to make bills it is tough on old friendships.

The author does a terrific job in both these books while they are fiction they seem to be very acurate with fishing descriptions both this book and the first (highliners) are excellent reads

I work with walleye pollock on a daily basis so the misspelling of the name of this fish ('pollack')throughout 'Breakers' bugged the heck out of me, but overall this was a good read. Same thing bugged me in Russell Drumm's 'In the Slick of the Cricket' when he misspelled otolith (fish do NOT have otaliths!). 'Breakers' explores the pervasive nature of our relationship with Japanese fish market buyers and their financing of American fisheries. I'm very interested to explore this dynamic myself in the 'real world' as I hadn't really paid much attention to the changeover from joint-venture and foreign fisheries to domestic catch. I did not find 'Breakers' to be as enthralling as 'Highliners', hence the lower rating.

An excellent story, well written and done in a manner that allows the reader to 'experience' the moment. Accurately describes the Asian attitude and gives good insight as to how and why the Japanese in particular do business in a way that is certainly foreign to most Americans. The Japanese 'method' is not right or wrong, just different from the American 'method'.

Read 'Highliners' first, then 'Breakers'.

I would just like to point out, concerning the review below, that Webster's dictionary definition lists "pollack or pollock" as the correct spelling. Here's what it reads: "Pollack or pollock: 1 -- a commercially important north Atlantic food fish (Pollachius virens) related to and resembling the cods but darker. 2 -- a commercially important northern Pacific food fish (Theragra chalcogramma) of the cod family that closely resembles the pollack -- called also walleye pollack."