The Last Whaler

Capt. Nicholas Karas is both an ichthyologist and journalist. Throughout his life he has been intimate with the marine scene.

He was born in Binghamton, N.Y. After four years in the Navys amphibious forces during the Korean Conflict he attended St. Lawrence and Johns Hopkins universities, where he majored in the biological sciences, and Syracuse University, where he received his masters degree in journalism.

He joined the staff of True magazine, then Argosy magazine as outdoors editor. For nearly a decade after being associated with magazines, he became a fulltime freelance writer, traveling throughout the world and produced more than 500 major magazine features. Settling down, for 25 years, Karas became the staff outdoors columnist for Newsday (New York) and wrote more than 3,500 columns, then followed by 10 years as a freelance columnist for the N.Y. Times and several major magazines.

Hunky is his first novel. Befriended years ago by James Michener, Karas asked him what to write about. He answered, write about what you know best. Hunky was the result. Hunky, is the story of two families who lived on opposite sides of the continental divide high in the Carpathian Mountains in 19th century eastcentral Europe. It spans three generations and a hundred years in their plight to escape more than a thousand years of oppression and servitude. Kurkis Reviewdescribed Karas uses of a unique journalistic genre, an adroit blend of history, biography, autobiography and fiction, that traces their Americanization in the coals mines and steel mills of Pennsylvania and the shoe factories of New York.

The Last Whaler reveals Karas intense relationship with the sea. He has held his captains license for 30 years and regularly fished the off shore waters of Long Island. Few other waters have missed the cut of his keel. Karas and his wife Shirley live at the edge of land at Orient Point, N.Y.