The Fisherman's Son

The sea is an abiding presence in the life of Neil Kruger, whom we first meet as he is adrift on a raft somewhere in the Pacific, despairing of rescue and buffeted by a host of memories about the events that brought him to this perilous juncture. This strong coming-of-age novel from the author of Save the Whale evokes the mystical bond between men and the sea. As a boy, Neil is caught in a tug-of-war between his parents: his mother hates and fears the sea, but his father is determined to make a living as a commercial fisherman out of Half Moon Bay on the Northern California coast. Neil is forced to join his father's crew at age 12, when he is introduced to the backbreaking labor and monotony of the fisherman's life, punctuated by moments of fellowship, sudden danger and frightening premonitions: the sight of a dead woman's body floating ""face down... as if she was embracing the sea she gazed upon below"" continues to haunt the boy. In a style so stripped and plain it is sometimes pedestrian but sometimes vividly cinematic, Koepf conveys a child's confusion about the adult world and his burgeoning awareness of the shortcomings of parents and the dictates of the Catholic church. As his parents' marriage deteriorates and his father's spirit is broken by the near impossibility of turning a profit, Neil understands the older man's essential nobility and finds himself, too, committed to the sea. Koepf outlines his story in a series of vignettes that grow in cumulative power. The sea is the strongest character in the narrative: eternal, beautiful and bountiful; treacherous and deadly. (Sept. )