| Red Summer: The Danger, Madness, and Exaltation of Salmon Fishing in a Remote Alaskan Village | 
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Avg. Customer Rating:   (based on 4 reviews)
Sales Rank: 25082
Category: Book
Author: Bill Carter
Publisher: Scribner
Studio: Scribner
Manufacturer: Scribner
Label: Scribner
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.1
ISBN: 0743297067
Dewey Decimal Number: 597
EAN: 9780743297066
ASIN: 0743297067
Publication Date: May 13, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A vivid, unforgettable account of the danger, pain, and joy of working on a salmon fishing boat and living in a small village on the farthest edge of AlaskaSet in the tiny Native village of Egegik on the shores of Alaska's Bristol Bay, Bill Carter's Red Summer is the thrilling story of one man's journey from novice to seasoned fisherman over the course of four beautiful, brutal summers in one of the earth's few remaining wild places. As millions of salmon race toward their annual spawning grounds, Carter learns the ancient, backbreaking trade of the set net fisherman, one of the most exhilarating and dangerous jobs in the world. Housed in a dilapidated shack with no hot water and boarded-up windows that keep the bears at bay, Carter spends his days battling the elements on the river and his nights drinking whiskey with a memorable group of hardworking, hard-living characters. There's Sharon, the tough, charismatic woman who runs Carter's fishing crew; Carl, her stoic but warmhearted colleague; and a half-dozen local fishermen, many born and raised in this unforgiving place. Their stories -- harrowing, touching, full of humor -- all underscore the credo of the village's fishermen: Do the work or leave. Carter's crew is imperiled a number of times as tides rise, nets are snagged, and the weight of too many fish threatens to sink their boat. Written with gusto and honesty, Red Summer brims with astonishing human experience and joins the grand tradition of books written by great American outdoorsmen-writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Edward Abbey, Peter Matthiessen, and Sebastian Junger. Red Summer will appeal not only to fishermen, naturalists, adventurers, and armchair anthropologists alike but also to anyone who has ever yearned, however privately, to escape the bonds of modern civilization.
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| Customer Reviews:
 Good Read As To The Action, the Rest is A Matter of Personal Taste July 1, 2008
The book divides itself between the commercial salmon fishing trade, on the one hand, and environmental politics/philosophy/policy on the other. When addressing the former, the writing is crisp and clear. There is lots of action, fascinating characters, and plenty to hold your attention -- just a good, solid read. He really puts you into the place, the action, and the people. When it shifts to environmental politics, philosophy, and policy, it helps a great deal if you share the author's point of view. A journalist by trade, he has strong opinions. If you don't agree, you can skip those parts and get back to the action, which is well worth the time.
 Egegik, AK - The Real Thing June 15, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'd like to witness to the accuracy of Carter's portrayal of Egegik summers and the fishing men (and some hardy women) do there.
I worked eight summers in Egegik (1994-2001), starting in the cannery, set-netting for two summers and drift fishing for four. I lived and worked with two long time Egegik families (one not so much a family, but a clan). Carter has squarely captured the joy, exhaustion, laughter, anger, dissipation, recklessness, heroism, bawdiness, and adventure of Egegik summers. Everything he writes in his book is true and he does not exagerate (hard as that may seem!). The people he writes about (many I also knew) are just as lost, wild, mean, strong, and gripping as he portrays them.
Carter's book isn't the last word about Egegik summers (there are many many books that could be written about the drift fishing, the cannery workers, the fish and game officers, and more), but it'd dead on accurate for the territory it covers. His book shows why so many of us went back summer after summer and still dream of doing so now that we've moved on to the rest of our lives.
Crazy and Exciting, Just Like His First Book June 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
A man who is drawn to adventures as easily as many of us are drawn to our remote controls, Bill Carter offers us the gift of roaming vicariously into his world as he sets sail for another wild journey in Red Summer.
This second memoir from the author of the sentimental and heartbreaking Fools Rush In, takes us to the waters of Alaska for the core fishing season where he toiled on a boat for four years doing harder work than most of us will ever encounter.
The landscape is depressing, the townspeople are harsh and the money isn't nearly as good as you'd think it would be for life-threatening labor, yet Bill keeps going back for more.
When you're not marveling at his physical and emotional stamina, you're wondering why the heck he hasn't packed up camp and returned to the sunny desert of Arizona that he calls home.
By the end of the story, after you've met the "characters" who are now like family to him, and you appreciate the greater good of what fishing in that part of the world can provide, you'll understand.
And you'll search your mind wondering where Bill's life will take him next...and hope he invites you along.
An adrenalin-filled armchair adventure June 7, 2008
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Bill Carter is a fisher of men.
There. I've spent two hours trying not to say it in the opening paragraph of my review of his new memoir Red Summer: The Danger, Madness and
Exaltation of Salmon Fishing in a Remote Alaskan Village. But he is. In the memoir, he also happens to work as a salmon fisherman off the shores of Egegik, Alaska.
The slim book put out by Scribner tells a solid story on several levels. First, it's an adrenalin-pumping armchair adventure. Commercial fishing is among the world's most dangerous occupations, with a higher death rate by far than any other. Carter gives a skin-tingling account of what it's like to dance with death on a daily basis under the guise of trying to earn a few bucks.
The work is brutal. In the span of about four weeks, Carter spends hundreds of hours dislodging millions of salmon by hand from the nets strewn across the Egegik River. The skin on his fingers cracks so bad it takes Super Glue to keep it together. Several times, he nearly drowns in the rush of fish swarming down the river in their frantic effort to spawn. The tendons in his arm swell to tennis-ball size. He lives in a shack with no running water and boards on the windows to keep out bears. He regularly wakes in a cold sweat from the nightmares the place provokes in him. His fear never leaves.
"Everything up here experiences a harsh death, humans included," Carter says in the book. "No one who stays here ever ends up in a hospice. No one drinks green tea and reads self-help books....This is a land of extremes and those who keep returning follow the silent restriction that acts as the only social law: Do the work or leave."
Egegik's not a postcard-pretty community. It's remote. Violent. Unfriendly to outsiders. Almost a shantytown. The place attracts extreme personalities, so any description like zany or stupid or tough falls exponentially short. It's through the stories Carter tells, with both objectivity and heart, that you get a real sense of the people and place. And while they're not likely to be people you'd bond with in the real world, they're fascinating to read about.
There's nothing romantic about the place, but Carter views it with a poet's eye. He finds connections between humanity's struggle for conquest and the salmon's desperate attempts to reach fresh water long enough to survive, spawn, then die. The other fishermen don't struggle with the morality of what they're doing - it's a business and they're entitled to seek their profits. Carter does.
"I fish commercially and slaughter thousands....each day, I find one moment, no matter how tired I am or how much slime of their guts I have in my hair or on my body, to stare into their oval black eyes. Their mouths gasp for their last breath, and I feel the weight of guilt."
In addition to a Hemingway-esque man-against-fish story, Red Summer is compelling from an environmental standpoint, especially in light of the headlines coming out of California about the cancellation of its commercial fishing season due to the collapse of the chinook population. In layman's terms, you get a clear explanation of the industry and the challenges it faces. The greed of the fishermen continually bumps up against the stewardship policies of U.S. Fish and Game, which through careful management ensures that enough salmon make it upriver each year to spawn and keep the species alive. It answers any questions you might have about how the industry works.
Why does he keep going back? That question is trickier to figure out, but it was foremost in mind throughout my read. It's astoundingly difficult work, supremely dangerous, the concept of kindness to strangers doesn't exist, and the pay isn't even very good. Still, Carter fishes for four summers in Egegik.
Why, why, why? He says in the book, "I return to Egegik because I need a place where nature still has the upper hand, reminding me that my existence is fragile and fleeting." I think it's something more.
I think Carter returned for the same reason he went to Sarajevo in the middle of a war, which he chronicles in his first book, Fools Rush In: A True Story of War and Redemption, the movie version of which is currently in pre-production. Probably for the same reason he hiked across Utah with nothing more than a backpack and a tin cup.
It's because he's a fisher of men, and only when living on the edge does Carter find the sort of honesty and integrity in people that he craves. It's then that he feels Alive, with a capital A. He wants to know who a person is - what humanity is -- when stripped of the comfortable yet mind-numbing world of force-fed news and cable television and corporate brainwashing.
In Red Summer, we all benefit from Carter's curiosity without having to undertake the grueling journey ourselves.
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