cover image A Sailor's Valentine: Stories

A Sailor's Valentine: Stories

Craig Moodie. St. Martin's Press, $17.95 (165pp) ISBN 978-0-312-11053-6

Set in the waterways and towns of Cape Cod, Moodie's collection of 13 contemporary sea stories about commercial fishermen is an impressive debut. Populated with men ``partial to whiskey, hard weather, and mermaids,'' many of these tales juxtapose relationships with women against the love of the sea. In ``Harwich Port,'' a young seaman moves between his girlfriend and his search for offshore work. When a wife of 50 years reveals to her husband that she's in love with someone else in ``Noon,'' the husband turns to the sea for solace. Tradition and superstition motivate several characters: in ``The Ropes,'' a son leaves for Colorado hoping to return a better man in his father's eyes; in ``The Dream of the Whistling Pig,'' a man, frightened about revealing a dream of capsizing in his boat, awakens to realize he is experiencing his own nightmare. Only the title story is cliched and cloying--it concerns a young seaman yearning for a girl from the city. Moodie is an expert at building suspense, however; the finest stories are ``Report from Pollock Rip,'' a gripping rescue yarn, and ``Child in the Shoals,'' a spellbinding tale in which a lobsterman, cast overboard and clinging to a bell buoy while waiting to be rescued, is befriended by a blind gannet. (May)