Spartina

Winner of the National Book Award

A classic tale of a man, a boat, and a storm, Spartina is the lyrical and compassionate story of Dick Pierce, a commercial fisherman along the shores of Rhode Island's Narragansett Bay.  A kind, sensitive, family man, he is also prone to irascible outbursts against the people he must work for, now that he can no longer make his living from the sea.

Pierce's one great passion, a fifty-foot fishing boat called Spartina, lies unfinished in his back yard.  Determined to get the funds he needs to buy her engine, he finds himself taking a foolish, dangerous risk.  But his real test comes when he must weather a storm at sea in order to keep his dream alive.  Moving and poetic, Spartina is a masterly story of
one man's ongoing struggle to find his place in the world.

"Possibly the best American novel since The Old Man and the Sea, maybe even Moby-Dick." —The New York Times Book Review

"Vivid. . . . Engrossing. . . . Old-fashioned, full-bodied fiction with a vengeance. . . . They do not make novels like this very much anymore." —Time