When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
Every fall, the men of Loyalty Island sail from the Olympic Peninsula up to the Bering Sea to spend the winter catching king crab. Their dangerous occupation keeps food on the table but constantly threatens to leave empty seats around it.
To Cal, Alaska remains as mythical and mysterious as Treasure Island, and the stories his father returns with are as mesmerizing as those he once invented about Captain Flint before he turned pirate. But while Cal is too young to accompany his father, he is old enough to know that everything depends on the fate of those few boats thousands of miles to the north. He is also old enough to feel the tension between his parents over whether he will follow in his father's footsteps. And old enough to wonder about his mother's relationship with John Gaunt, owner of the fleet.
Then Gaunt dies suddenly, leaving the business in the hands of his son, who seems intent on selling away the fishermen's livelihood. Soon Cal stumbles on evidence that his father may have taken extreme measures to salvage their way of life. As winter comes on, his suspicions deepening and his moral compass shattered, he is forced to make a terrible choice.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Make no mistake, Dybek's title is a shout-out to Treasure Island and with good reason, since this debut combines the spirit of 19th-century boys' adventure stories with a more stationary coming-of-age yarn. Nowhere could be more stationary than Loyalty Island, a crab-fishing village located on the border between Canada and the U.S., and home to young Cal, incorrigibly imaginative son of one of the perpetually absent fathers who sail off on perilous journeys, leaving their sons to grow up in the oppressive shadow of fishing magnate John Gaunt and learn of the outside world from movies and records. When Gaunt dies, a cold war divides the generations between tradition and a love of pop culture relics. A murder conspiracy and family secrets float to the surface, but Dybek's grasp on his material is too shaky for the intrigue to have much effect. Cal's world never quite comes to life, perhaps because most of the action occurs offshore, leaving readers with an endless list of samurai movies and Dylan songs in lieu of plot and a satisfying d nouement. Though there are hints of precocious brilliance, too often the novel reads as pastiche.
