Alaska Employment Law

Because I was fortunate enough this past summer to rent a cottage right on the rocky coast of Maine, in view of hundreds upon hundreds of lobster buoys (I was awakened most morning by the sound of lobster boats chugging through Brown’s Cove and pulling traps), it seemed only right to read The Lobster Chronicles, by Linda Greenlaw.  Greenlaw achieved some fame as the female sword boat captain in Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm, but after 17 years of ocean fishing, she decided to return to her family on Isle au Haut, Maine, a very small island off the coast of Stonington with fewer than 50 year-round residents.  There she became a lobster fisher.  The Lobster Chronicles is a short memoir about a year in her life on a very small island, working in a back-breaking job, and sometimes enjoying it.  While the book has its share of interesting bits about the concerns of lobstermen (particularly on Isle au Haut, where lobster fishing is Plan A and there is pretty much no Plan B), about how to pull traps without going over the side, about bait and about fate, it’s a slight book, I thought.  You can read it in a day or you can skip it.  Her previous book, The Hungry Ocean, was a best seller, so maybe it’s better.

And The Perfect Storm is a terrific book, which, as is usually the case, I liked better than the film.