At the time that she wrote this book, Linda Greenlaw was the world’s only female swordfishing captain, and she was the primary source for the technical detail in Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm. In her own memoir, she describes a typical thirty-day swordfishing trip from Gloucester to the Grand Banks aboard the Hannah Boden (sister ship to the Andrea Gail which was lost during the Halloween storm in 1991). The author describes the boat, equipment, electronics, and her technique for finding just the right area to fish. The process of laying out the 40 mile long-line and hauling in the catch is also explained in detail. She talks about the shipboard life of the crew, their personality conflicts, hard work, and uncertain rewards—what will be the selling price for the catch?

Narrative Context: Middle Range Narrative Content

Subject: Long line/deep-sea fishing, commercial fishing, women boat captains, dangerous occupations, women in unusual careers, nature writing, personal responses to nature

Type: Memoir; autobiography

Pacing: Slower paced than most peril-at-sea stories

Tone: Exciting without terror, evocative of a dangerous way of life, with man against nature.

Similar Titles or Authors: The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger; The Cure for Anything is Salt Water by Mary South; Steady as She Goes: Women’s Adventures at Sea edited by Barbara Sjoholm; Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic’s Edge by Jill Fredston

Whole Collection Context: Waterwoman by Lenore Hart

Learning/Experiencing: High on this continuum, with all the detail provided.

Characterizations: The author reveals her personality and thought processes through her narrative, and shows effective insight into the characters and assets/liabilities of her crew.

Story Line: More action-oriented than psychological.

Language: Straightforward, without much embellishment or philosophy.

Setting: Ocean off Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada, and the trip to and from the fishing grounds.

10.0

Written by the female fishing captain featured in The Perfect Storm. A very well-written & interesting story about what it is like to fish for a living.

Great book about a swordfishing trip, interspersed with vignettes from other trips. Lots of detail on what life as a fisherman is like, including gear lists, budgets, temperature ranges for swordfish, etc. ( )

The book embodies what is right and wrong with our culture and civilization

Did my slugline suck you into this review of The Hungry Ocean? It is not meant to be misleading, even if what I refer to is more subtle reading into things on my part. Linda Greenlaw is a swordboat captain in a definitively man’s world of commercial ocean fishing. But, she isn’t just any captain, but a good one at that. She turns up in Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm. But this book isn’t about that, nor is it an attempt to capitalize on that book’s success; this book is about the essence of commercial fishing – commercial swordfish fishing to be specific – and it’s about what it is like for a woman to succeed in a male dominated enterprise. It is also about life in general as well as one’s journey to find a meaning and place in life.

That is a lot to place on one book. But intentionally or not, that what Greenlaw takes on. This book is specifically about one fishing trip for Greenlaw’s swordboat, the Hannah Boden; but along the way she talks about life in general in her neck of the woods and corner of world – both physically and psychologically. At times Greenlaw paints the picture of a lonely woman searching for something; but I think that is much more than the cliché at its heart. She is searching for meaning and place, not a man to make her complete. And, in the end, she seems to find a new direction to life.

Beyond the personal story of Linda Greenlaw, this book is about the commercial fishing industry. Maybe it doesn’t dig deeply into what is right or wrong with it, nor does it over-analyze it on the micro or macro scale, but what we see on this one fishing trip is enough to open the reader’s eyes to an industry that is both a way of life on the micro scale for many of the fisherman and also another over consumptive practice on the macro scale. The story is both engrossing and romantic.

But at times the shine is lost and the underbelly exposed. The best single example I can give is waste and litter that is produced when commercial fishing is practiced on this scale. When they let the line out, they place chemical lights – the type that you bend and shake to activate – at regular intervals along the line as an additional lure; these lights are single-use, disposable, and left to sink to the bottom of the world’s oceans. This is one single, indicative example of waste on a large scale practiced by our civilization. ( )