Eight true-life stories of fishing crews who braved circumstances beyond which no ordinary human being would expect to survive, in a collection that explores the challenging and brutal world of the Alaskan fishing fleet Stories of disaster and survival in commercial fishing boats working the Alaskan coast make up this sequel to Walker's Working on the Edge (LJ 6/15/91). These eight stories of fishermen whose trips went sour are harrowing, but the book's overall effect is numbing rather than exciting. Although no one would deny the suffering and loss experienced by the survivors, their stories are pretty much alike. Walker does not have a particularly deft style, nor, in this volume, does he provide any great insight into conditions in the king-crab trade. Only libraries that purchased the earlier book and are particularly interested in the subject should take the trouble to acquire this.?Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, Kan. Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. The Bering Sea in January can be a mean place, as Walker (Working on the Edge, 1991) relates in this spine-tingling (if redundant) collection--particularly when the winds clip by at 100 mph, the waves crest at 60 feet, the water temperature is 38 degrees, it's nightime, and your boat is sinking. Walker has no time for foreshadowing here, no time to develop mood or characters. These are grab-you-by-the-throat, rip-snorting tales of disaster on furious high seas and of the outrageous efforts made by both rescuers and those in the drink to beat the odds for survival in the Bering's icy waters. There is not much variation in these eight tales: In hellacious weather, a fishing vessel founders. Sometimes it runs aground or overturns with the accumulated weight of ice, or it just springs a leak. Then it all comes down to hypothermia and how fast it steals your life. The rescues are thus all just in the nick of time, and Walker plays them for all they're worth. But the lack of variety here, combined with Walker's tendency to overdeploy stock sentences--``His terror became resolve,'' and ``He thought of his lovely young wife,'' and ``This is the end!''--robs the stories of their specific identities. What saves the best ones is Walker's fastening on a particular element: the godawful storms, known as williwaws, that boom out of the coastal mountains, their impossible winds freighted with ice and snow (vigorously described in the chapter ``Chopper Rescue: Men in Peril''); or the cheekiness of Tim White (in the chapter titled ``The Face of an Angel''), who stayed warm by working hard at being a badass. It is said that America's most dangerous profession is commercial fishing on Alaska's high seas. Even a quick dip into this collection will convince you of that. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. Spike Walker writes with the assurance and descriptive authenticity of one who has himself experienced the adversity and almost unbelievable danger of the Alaskan fishing trade. Crews on board Alaskan fishing vessels like the 40-ton Tidings risk everything to make a quick fortune bringing in boatloads of crab, salmon, halibut, and codfish. Here is a marine harvest of eight accounts, including first-person testimony that encompasses the extremes of the human condition--ignorance and ingenuity, unpreparedness and quick-thinking cowardice and bravery, selfishness and sacrifice, panic and courage, hopelessness and dogged determination, catastrophe and good luck. No fiction could be more gripping than these stories of actual disaster on the frigid waters of the Bering Sea. You will experience the arctic world, one of drifting fields of polar ice, powerful rip tides, and hurricane-force winds, and be amazed by these men who challenge unmerciful conditions and sometimes survive to tell the tale. -- Pacific Fisherman Magazine