Coming Back Alive - Spike Walker

Coming Back Alive

By Spike Walker

  • Release Date: 2002-10-11
  • Genre: Nature
Score: 4.5
4.5
From 32 Ratings

Description

When the fishing vessel La Conte sinks suddenly at night in one-hundred-mile-per-hour winds and record ninety-foot seas during a savage storm in January 1998, her five crewmen are left to drift without a life raft in the freezing Alaskan waters and survive as best they can.

One hundred fifty miles away, in Sitka, Alaska, an H-60 Jayhawk helicopter lifts off from America's most remote Coast Guard base in the hopes of tracking down an anonymous Mayday signal. A fisherman's worst nightmare has become a Coast Guard crew's desperate mission. As the crew of the La Conte begin to die one by one, those sworn to watch over them risk everything to pull off the rescue of the century.

Spike Walker's memoir of his years as a deckhand in Alaska, Working on the Edge, was hailed by James A. Michner as "masterful . . . will become the definitive account of this perilous trade, an addition to the literature of the sea." In Coming Back Alive, Walker has crafted his most devastating book to date. Meticulously researched through hundreds of hours of taped interviews with the survivors, this is the true account of the La Conte's final voyage and the relationship between Alaskan fishermen and the search and rescue crews who risk their lives to save them.

Reviews

  • Great book

    5
    By 42n82b
    Thoroughly enjoyed this book, descriptive of extreme Alaskan terrain and weather, and the heroic Coast Guard men who rescue folks at the mercy of storms and unfathomable difficulties. Why these Coasties are not the ones receiving the Medal of Freedom is beyond me.
  • True life stories of heroism and tragedy

    5
    By Dittoheadla
    An absolutely gripping book you will not be able to put down and when you are finished you will want to share with everyone you talk to!!!!