Memories of the author's youth are incorporated in a novel about the boyhood escapades of Noah Marlin, the son of a Chesapeake Bay waterman. This is literally a wonderful book. The wonder is that of a boy, Noah Marlin, growing up along the Chester River near the Chesapeake Bay. Inevitably there is something of Twain and Tarkington in his pranks, hooky-playing, and fishing. But other qualities distinctly Gilbert Byron's make the novel more than a nostalgic re-creation of an American childhood. This isn't childhood we're reading about, it's life. ― Saturday Review Crabs, perch, terrapin and frogs enter the episodes, but they are the only things fishy about this very happy sequence of a boy's growing. ― New York Times Book Review Nationally acclaimed when first published in 1957 by Atlantic/Little, Brown, The Lord's Oysters has never previously been available in a paperback edition. While presented as a novel, it captures with vivid fidelity the life of the Chesapeake watermen and their families in the early 20th century. Gilbert Byron grew up on Maryland's Eastern Shore, a waterman's son like his young hero. A schoolteacher for twenty-eight years, he began writing full time in 1957 and was the author of eleven books. His beloved classic, The Lord's Oysters, is also available from Johns Hopkins. Used Book in Good Condition