As Four Thousand Hooks opens, an Alaskan fishing schooneris sinking. It is the summer of 1972, and the sixteen-year-old narratoris at the helm. Backtracking from the gripping prologue, Dean Adamstells how he came to be a crew member on the Grant and unfolds a taleof adventure that reads like a novel—full of drama, conflict, andresonant portrayals of halibut fishing, his ragtag shipmates, maritimeAlaska, and the ambiguities of family life. At sea, the Grant’s crew teach Dean the daily tasks of baitingthousands of longline hooks and handling the catch, and on shore theylead him through the seedy bars and guilty pleasures of Kodiak. Exhausted by twenty-hour workdays and awed by the ocean’s rawpower, he observes examples of human courage and vulnerability andemerges with a deeper knowledge of himself and the world. Four Thousand Hooks is both an absorbing adventure tale and arich ethnography of a way of life and work that has sustained Northwestfamilies for generations. This coming of age story will appeal toreaders—including young adults—interested in oceanadventures, commercial fishing, maritime life, and the Northwest Coast. | Four Thousand Hooks by Dean Adams, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters