Coming Back Alive

From Publishers Weekly
Walker spends about half of his narrative assembling a cast for his tale of seafaring disaster on the southern Gulf of Alaska fishing grounds: a five-man crew of earnest commercial fishermen; a leaky trawler, La Conte; helicopter crews and surprise! an anomalous winter storm. The January 1998 storm was the worst in the state's history, and La Conte took in water and sank, leaving its crew to the mercy of 100 mph winds and 90-foot seas. Walker (Nights of Ice) ably describes the Coast Guard's heroic rescue of the ship's crew along the rugged Alaskan coast. The episode in which the crew is finally forced to abandon their vessel in 40-degree water, and to stay lashed together long enough for three Coast Guard teams to attempt wind-whipped rescues, is harrowing and suspenseful. Still, too many adverbs slow down the narrative and strain to convey tension. Walker tracked down and interviewed the La Conte's survivors and other participants in the operation, and his portrayal of the fringe existence of commercial fishermen juxtaposes society's typical disdain for them with the loyalty and stoicism of these five men. But he manages only a pat resolution: "[t]he relationship between fishermen and the sea, and the airborne alliance of those sworn to watch over them, continues today all across the vast ocean reaches and tidelands of Alaska." Map not seen by PW. Agents, Rand Koler and Lance Rosen. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
Each year the U.S. Coast Guard carries out well over 50,000 search-and-rescue operations, but to many people away from the coasts its efforts are little known. This book should change that. It is the story of only one 1998 rescue, but this was arguably "the most harrowing high-seas helicopter rescue" ever carried out and will certainly raise readers' appreciation of the Coast Guard mission. In a story at times reminiscent of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm (LJ 5/15/97) and Frederic Stonehouse's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Avery Color Studios, 1998. reprint), the author describes how the Guard rescued the crew of the La Conte despite 70' waves and 100-mph winds in prose so vivid you can practically taste the salt spray. While this is primarily the story of one particular incident, there is substantial coverage of the individuals involved including the fishermen and search-and-rescue crews and of other rescues as well. Highly recommended for all public libraries as well as high school and college libraries where there is interest in marine careers. This book might also interest "reluctant readers." Margaret Rioux, MBL/WHOI Lib., Woods Hole, MA Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
In the fall of 1998, Walker moved to Alaska and began researching the sinking of the fishing schooner La Conte in a storm on the night of January 31 of that year, and the rescue of the crew by the U.S. Coast Guard Search and Rescue teams. The 79-year-old wooden-hulled vessel sank in the Fairweather fishing grounds off the coast of Sitka, Alaska, in what was described as the worst storm in the state's history. Walker gives readers a frightening account of the crews' struggle in the freezing water; only three of the five-man crew survived. He recounts the Coast Guard's three attempts to save the fishermen, the third rescue crew completing the mission without radio communication under the most adverse conditions imaginable. Walker offers a detailed portrait of the Coast Guard's search and rescue helicopter squads and recounts the lives and work of the commercial fishermen. His use of dialogue at crucial moments during the rescue operation is annoying, but the book is a meticulously researched story of an intense human drama. George Cohen
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Kirkus Reviews
"Don't be surprised if tears of relief flood your eyes after finishing any number of these death-dealing stories."


Book 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.



About the Author
Spike Walker spent nine seasons as a crewman aboard some of the most successful crab boats in the Alaskan fleet. In addition to his crab-fishing experience, Spike Walker has worked in the offshore oilfields of Louisiana and Texas; along the Mississippi River as a certified, commercial deep-sea diver; and in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Alaska as a logger.



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Wonderfully suspenseful tales of air-sea rescue from Walker ("Nights of Ice", 1997, etc.), a veteran chronicler of such acts of heroism. Although the meat of this story is the rescue of fishermen from the sunken vessel "La Conte", Walker sets the stage with a few chapters of rescue operations from the early years-a mere 20 years back-when chopper pilots and rescue swimmers counted prayer as their most valuable tool. Helicopters went down then in scary numbers, but this was the gig the Coast Guardsmen had signed on for, and it is because of their daring that what is practiced today as operational tactics were learned in the first place. Walker paints the history, geography, and citizenry of Alaskan fishing towns with great warmth and evocativeness, and then turns his attention to extreme weather in the Gulf of Alaska. It's a triple-digit universe: waves over 100 feet, winds over 100 miles per hour, squall lines hundreds of miles in length. Unless you are in the maw of such a hellacious storm, the next most realistic thing is for Walker to describe it to you, especially a night storm, with rogue monster "pitch-black waves moving out of the pitch-black night," then your boat slipping into the greasy depths of the trough, the air so thick with sea spray it is impossible to breathe. The "La Conte "never had any business in such weather, and she went down fast with no lifeboat, throwing the 5-man crew into the 40-degree drink in the middle of the night. Tethered together, they were found by a Coast Guard helicopter, but wound up spending more than seven hours in the water, through three separate helicopter missions. At one point, a helicopter was literally dodging waves, hovering at 80feet to drop the rescue basket only to find a 100-foot monster coming down on them. Unfathomably, three of the fishermen were rescued. Don't be surprised if tears of relief flood your eyes after finishing any number of these death-dealing stories.


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