SURVIVING THE ISLAND OF GRACE: A Memoir

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 fiancé, 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. (Oct. 17)

Forecast:Fans of Linda Greenlaw's The Lobster Chronicles will pick this up.