Water
is one of Nature’s most precious resources, yet many people abuse it with
the thought, "There’s always more where that came from."
In his book, The Riverkeeper, Alec Wilkinson explores the lives of
Americans who work on the water–environmentalists on the Hudson River,
Indians in the Pacific Ocean off Alaska, and commercial fishermen in the North
Atlantic.
Of the three stories in this book, the last is not only the one he named
his book after but also the most moving. It’s about the blatant taking of
Hudson River water for use in the Caribbean. In other words, someone was
selling what is essentially free water without permission of the local
authorities.
The story centers around John Cronin who patrols the river for the Hudson
River Fisherman’s Association. He’s the Riverkeeper. In this readers learn
about the abundance of life beneath the silty surface of the Hudson River, as
well as it rhythms and habits and the threats to its vitality. This is the
story of a man obsessed with protecting the river.
Wilkinson moves from civilization to its edge with narry a hiccup in
"The Uncommitted Crime." Here is tells the story of Matthew Kookesh,
a Tlinguit Indian living in a small frontier settlement in southeast Alaska.
Kookesh fishes for salmon the way his ancestors have for thousands of years,
and he wants to preserve that. Wilkinson interweaves Tlinguit history and
culture into his story about Kookesh who like his people, feel that white
people wrongly took their lands as part of Alaska.
In the Blessing of the Fleet, Wilkinson investigates fishing off the coast
of Provincetown, Massachusetts–its riches and joys, its failures and
dangers. Portuguese sailors came to these shores long ago to work on whaling
ships. Today, they man their own fleet of fishing boats. Wilkinson introduces
his readers to the insular, expatriate and daredevil lives of these fishermen.
This is an exceptional work of literary journalism, at times disturbing and
at others profound. It tells the stories of men and women trying against
powerful odds to save what they love of their pasts in the hope of preserving
their future.
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