The Curve of Equal Time
By (Author) Thomas McGuire
Red Hen Press
Red Hen Press
13th November 2024
United States
General
Fiction
Fiction: general and literary
813.6
Paperback
224
Width 127mm, Height 203mm
Nora Tyler returns to Alaska after many years away and finds work on a salmon fishing boat, but the long, hard season brings both deep friendships and unexpected violence.
Over the course of the long, hard season, Nora reawakens to the beauty of fishing for salmon on the outer coast. Her four crewmates have their own troubled pasts, and she forms a different bond with each one. A rivalry develops with another boat, the Viking Hero. When a woman is lost overboard from the Hero, Nora tries to understand what happened and finds that the Hero was dealing drugs and her crewmate Danny was part of the action. Tobys ex-girlfriend, Sara, takes the place of the missing woman and finds herself in a difficult situation with no easy way out. At the end of the season, Nora and her crewmates go duck hunting on the Stikine River flats. Two of the Heros crew appear, perhaps not by chance, and the confrontation turns violent.
Tom McGuire came to Alaska with two college friends. Fifty years later, he still hasnt found reason to leave. He has worked as a salmon fisherman, carpenter, and North Slope oilfield worker. He and his wife have raised four children in a house they built on the banks of the Chilkoot River. Grizzly bears are frequent visitors. Tom has also paddled thousands of miles down (and up) northern rivers. He has published a book, 99 Days on the Yukon, that describes a summer-long trip with legendary canoeist Charlie Wolf.