Fishcamp Life on an Alaskan Shore

By Nancy Lord

Book Overview

For the past eighteen summers, Nancy Lord and her partner Ken have made a living, and made a life, fishing for salmon off the west side of Cook Inlet on the southern coast of Alaska. In Fishcamp , Lord provides a nuanced and engrossing portrait of their days and months in camp at the inlet. Nancy Lord celebrates a great good place--Cook Inlet, Alaska, where she and her partner have made a life together for more than twenty years. With poetic cadence and magical tone, Lord writes of her life from June to August, days filled with the mending of nets, the muscle-wrenching labor of the catch, the exquisite pleasure of an improvised hot-tub, and the often subtle beauty of the inlet's flora and fauna.Woven throughout Lord's adventures is the deeper history of the region's stories and legends of the native Denaina people; anecdotes about past and current residents; and descriptions of their neighbors, both human and animal.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1582430705
• ISBN13: 9781582430706
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: Counterpoint LLC
• Length: 284 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.5" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

Travel to Alaska for under $30. Read this book.

I'm an admitted sucker for nature writing and natural history, but am often disappointed in what I find out there. Not so with Fishcamp. This is that one-in-a-thousand book that I've longed for since first reading Walden twenty years ago. Ms. Lord writes beautifully of her day-to-day life fishing with her partner on Cook Inlet. And the stories and legends of the Dena'ina people, as well as the lives of the fishermen who have come before, will not be easily forgotten. This is not sentimental philosophizing about summers in Alaska. It is clear, respectful, and humble writing that will, I hope, be read for years to come