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Surviving the Island of Grace: A Memoir of Alaska
 
 
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Surviving the Island of Grace: A Memoir of Alaska [Hardcover]

Leslie Leyland Fields (Author)
4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)

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From Publishers Weekly

Readers with pioneer envy will get vicarious thrills from this high-energy memoir. With a keen eye for detail including the occasional stomach-turning description of dead marine life Fields delivers the lowdown on 23 years of commercial salmon fishing on a remote island off Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska. In the summer of 1978, Fields, an East Coast literary type, gamely followed her fiance, Duncan, to his family's generations-old fish camp, where she was unceremoniously ushered into her new workplace: 42-degree water. Fields's unflinching descriptions of spending her first winter eight miles (by water) from the nearest human being and telephone (shared by 100 people) are enough to make the most diehard hermit yearn for company. Of the miserable inconveniences of daily life, she writes, "The first time I did laundry here, I cried. Secretly. And only after putting eight loads of grimy clothes and fish-fouled jeans through the same marinade of mud sloshing in a wringer washer that only partially worked... I knew only two basic categories [before] then: clean and dirty, black and white. [This] seemed a horrible perversion of both the symbol and reality of laundering." The only parts of this memoir that readers may question involve cameo appearances by Duncan, Fields's workaholic, emotionally distant husband, who ushers her back to the skiff 20 minutes after she has a miscarriage. Given her gutsy, capable spirit, it's surprising that our intrepid narrator never follows through on her threat to walk away. Illus. not seen by PW.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

To deem this solely a memoir of her life spent as the wife of a salmon fisherman on a remote Alaskan island would be missing the boat, so to speak, for Fields' powerful, poetic essays deal with themes as large as the great outdoors in which she struggles to make her way and find her place. Barely out of her teens, Fields marries Duncan, determined to share the life he loves, every backbreaking hour of it; sailing the open ocean in a tiny skiff, harvesting salmon the way it has always been done: dragging them in by nets, picking them out by hand. Just as Thoreau went to the woods to live deliberately, so, too, do the Fields live on this ocean, without electricity or telephones, with bears and eagles as their constant companions, choosing it as much for what it offers as for what it omits. Paying homage to man's flexibility and gratitude for God's grace, Fields' memoir is haunting in its imagery, uplifting in its message. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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AS I RISE FROM CHOPPING THE HEAD of a bull kelp, I see more over my shoulder. Read the first page
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3 Reviews
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Average Customer Review
4.7 out of 5 stars (3 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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5.0 out of 5 stars Surviving the Island of Grace, Sep 26 2003
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This review is from: Surviving the Island of Grace: A Memoir of Alaska (Hardcover)
Once in a while along comes a book worth owning and certainly worth reading. Surviving the Island of Grace is such a book. It is a well written and fascinating true story of a young couple who meet in college, marry and make a life in Alaska, living summers on an island in the Shelikof Straits fishing for salmon. It is a story of hard work and achievement and paints a vivid picture of the beauty of place as well as the hardships and hazards of being out on the water tending the nets. This author opens up her life to the reader in a warm engaging way, sharing her amazing experiences. I couldn't put this book down until the last page at 3:00 in the morning.
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5.0 out of 5 stars A savory meal, July 31 2003
By 
David Lyons (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Surviving the Island of Grace: A Memoir of Alaska (Hardcover)
I have just finished reading Surviving The Island Of Grace. I savored it really. I can read quickly when I am reading to collect information. But when I read for pleasure, I read very slowly. I stretched this savory meal over a couple of weeks.

The richly textured use of words drew me in, while the occassional terror of life on a wind swept island gripped me. The author is very honest, yet inspiring with her insights.

My wife was chiding me to finish, so that she could pick it up. She couldn't wait. For a few days there have been two bookmarks tracing their way through this rich and intimate memoir of life in a world very different from my own.

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4.0 out of 5 stars An island of reality and hard work., Dec 16 2002
By 
Irving Warner (Fife, Washington, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Surviving the Island of Grace: A Memoir of Alaska (Hardcover)
"Surviving the Island of Grace" by Leslie Leyland Fields opens up a world for the reader that few see in such frank, unyielding literary light. The author's practiced instinct enables her to construct "Grace" out of exceptionally strong stuff. She weaves together the tapestry of her story as a youngster, young woman, wife and mother. These segments of her life take us from her rigorous New England childhood, through post-oil spill Alaska. The sturdy, sure-lined threads of learning, working and growing into marriage are blended skillfully into the workscape of the Alaska setnetter--a form of salmon fishing where the fish come to the net, rather than the net to the fish.
It is all here--and I mean all, the harsh, ugly griminess of living in a remote summer fish camp. There is also love, good fellowship, learning and above all else, faith. Leyland Fields is a person of deep religious conviction. Her faith appears, for the most part, in tasteful doses, even for a non-religious reader such as myself.
There are too many Alaska books by "hit and run" authors, who live up north a few years, then write a book or three. In "Grace" Leyland-Fields engraves all of her two-decades plus Alaska living on every one of its 330 pages. This book's most conspicuous literary achievement is the genuine, ardent authority of the narrator's voice.
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