What do you think?
Rate this book
Aransas
Coming to Port Aransas to catch and train porpoises for his benefactor's oceanarium, Jeff Downing falls in love with Mary Katherine and tries to prevent a porpoise from being sold for a movie
- GenresFiction
259 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 1980
30 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
Stephen Harrigan
28 books196 followersStephen Harrigan was born in Oklahoma City in 1948 and has lived in Texas since the age of five, growing up in Abilene and Corpus Christi.
He is a longtime writer for Texas Monthly, and his articles and essays have appeared in a wide range of other publications as well, including The Atlantic, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Audubon, Travel Holiday, Life, American History, National Geographic and Slate. His film column for Texas Monthly was a finalist for the 2015 National Magazine Awards.
Harrigan is the author of nine books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Gates of the Alamo, which became a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book, and received a number of awards, including the TCU Texas Book Award, the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and the Spur Award for Best Novel of the West.Remember Ben Clayton was published by Knopf in 2011 and praised by Booklist as a "stunning work of art" and by The Wall Street Journal as a "a poignantly human monument to our history." Remember Ben Clayton also won a Spur Award, as well as the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize, given by the Society of American Historians for the best work of historical fiction. In the Spring of 2013, the University of Texas Press published a career-spanning volume of his essays, The Eye of the Mammoth, which reviewers called “masterful” (from a starred review in Publishers Weekly), “enchanting and irresistible” (the Dallas Morning News) and written with “acuity and matchless prose.”(Booklist). His latest novel is A Friend of Mr. Lincoln.
Among the many movies Harrigan has written for television are HBO’s award-winning The Last of His Tribe, starring Jon Voight and Graham Greene, and King of Texas, a western retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear for TNT, which starred Patrick Stewart, Marcia Gay Harden, and Roy Scheider. His most recent television production was The Colt, an adaptation of a short story by the Nobel-prize winning author Mikhail Sholokhov, which aired on The Hallmark Channel. For his screenplay of The Colt, Harrigan was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and the Humanitas Prize. Young Caesar, a feature adaptation of Conn Iggulden’s Emperor novels, which he co-wrote with William Broyles, Jr., is currently in development with Exclusive Media.
A 1971 graduate of the University of Texas, Harrigan lives in Austin, where he is a faculty fellow at UT’s James A. Michener Center for Writers and a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly. He is also a founding member of CAST (Capital Area Statues, Inc.) an organization in Austin that commissions monumental works of art as gifts to the city. He is the recipient of the Texas Book Festival’s Texas Writers Award, the Lon Tinkle Award for lifetime achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters, and was recently inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. Stephen Harrigan and his wife Sue Ellen have three daughters and four grandchildren.
Harrigan is the author of nine books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Gates of the Alamo, which became a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book, and received a number of awards, including the TCU Texas Book Award, the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and the Spur Award for Best Novel of the West.Remember Ben Clayton was published by Knopf in 2011 and praised by Booklist as a "stunning work of art" and by The Wall Street Journal as a "a poignantly human monument to our history." Remember Ben Clayton also won a Spur Award, as well as the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize, given by the Society of American Historians for the best work of historical fiction. In the Spring of 2013, the University of Texas Press published a career-spanning volume of his essays, The Eye of the Mammoth, which reviewers called “masterful” (from a starred review in Publishers Weekly), “enchanting and irresistible” (the Dallas Morning News) and written with “acuity and matchless prose.”(Booklist). His latest novel is A Friend of Mr. Lincoln.
Among the many movies Harrigan has written for television are HBO’s award-winning The Last of His Tribe, starring Jon Voight and Graham Greene, and King of Texas, a western retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear for TNT, which starred Patrick Stewart, Marcia Gay Harden, and Roy Scheider. His most recent television production was The Colt, an adaptation of a short story by the Nobel-prize winning author Mikhail Sholokhov, which aired on The Hallmark Channel. For his screenplay of The Colt, Harrigan was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and the Humanitas Prize. Young Caesar, a feature adaptation of Conn Iggulden’s Emperor novels, which he co-wrote with William Broyles, Jr., is currently in development with Exclusive Media.
A 1971 graduate of the University of Texas, Harrigan lives in Austin, where he is a faculty fellow at UT’s James A. Michener Center for Writers and a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly. He is also a founding member of CAST (Capital Area Statues, Inc.) an organization in Austin that commissions monumental works of art as gifts to the city. He is the recipient of the Texas Book Festival’s Texas Writers Award, the Lon Tinkle Award for lifetime achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters, and was recently inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. Stephen Harrigan and his wife Sue Ellen have three daughters and four grandchildren.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
January 28, 2015
Thrilled to see this book back in print.
March 10, 2024
Mixed feelings
SPOILER ALERT
Great writing but incredibly sad that we still require wild animals to perform for our amusement. I wanted Sammy to return to the wild but he couldn’t, it was too late. This was not the ending I had hoped for.
The writing though is excellent. I grew up near Galveston and can remember going to Sea-a-rama as a kid, and watching dolphins perform! The mood, scenery, atmosphere is very evocative of the Texas Gulf Coast.
SPOILER ALERT
Great writing but incredibly sad that we still require wild animals to perform for our amusement. I wanted Sammy to return to the wild but he couldn’t, it was too late. This was not the ending I had hoped for.
The writing though is excellent. I grew up near Galveston and can remember going to Sea-a-rama as a kid, and watching dolphins perform! The mood, scenery, atmosphere is very evocative of the Texas Gulf Coast.
May 16, 2015
This was really a well told finding yourself story. The characterizations and relationships were very well drawn. Time and place were captured very well. I really liked the sense that you are left with that there aren't any real villains - just people who evolve very differently in their thinking. Favorite scene: when Sammy is trying to teach Jeff a "behavior" with the bleach bottle and gets frustrated with him because he can't seem to make him understand he should come live in the ocean with him. It so reminded me of when my dog is trying to make me understand something. Really just a nice story. I also felt like he captured the sense of a Texas Coastal bend beach town that just didn't take off commercially, which is what a lot of people really like about it after all.
March 6, 2025
Aransas Stephen Harrigan
"I could feel the gentle, rhythmic swell beneath me, like the shallow breathing of a sleeping person. I thought of the porpoises ... "
Person or Porpoises? That is the question.
As Jeff Dowling drifts into a job training dolphins at a bargain-basement circus in Port Aransas, the distinction between mammals — man and dolphin — becomes more and more unclear as the love between them grows.
I know how it can wreck a soul to love and be loved by a dog; how much more the love between beings of similar intelligence and heart.
As the porpoises, nicknamed Sammy and Wanda, become attached to Jeff, we see their behavior change. When Wanda is hurt, she withdraws emotionally: "There was a part of herself she did not give to us anymore." And when Sammy tries to lure Jeff to out sea, using a bleach bottle as a training tool, he is sure Jeff could live happily ever after with him: "It must have seemeed such a simple answer to all our troubles."
"Aransas" is set on Port Aransas, Aransas Pass, and Corpus Christi — all destinations in the heart of the Texas coast I've been visiting my entire life. Not because they're all that special, but because something about them feels like home. As soon as I finished the book I was ready to throw together a bag, hop in my truck, and be at the ferry by dark, to watch the porpoises swim alongside.
Early and late in the novel is a reference to a mosaic of Christ the Good Shepherd in a hospital lobby. The image provides fitting bookends to the story.
Aransas
Bless the innocent flock
grazing in the rhythmic swells
with concern and grace.
Raise your hand to that halo.
Shield them from this light-flood,
from waters much too still.
–Megan Willome
"I could feel the gentle, rhythmic swell beneath me, like the shallow breathing of a sleeping person. I thought of the porpoises ... "
Person or Porpoises? That is the question.
As Jeff Dowling drifts into a job training dolphins at a bargain-basement circus in Port Aransas, the distinction between mammals — man and dolphin — becomes more and more unclear as the love between them grows.
I know how it can wreck a soul to love and be loved by a dog; how much more the love between beings of similar intelligence and heart.
As the porpoises, nicknamed Sammy and Wanda, become attached to Jeff, we see their behavior change. When Wanda is hurt, she withdraws emotionally: "There was a part of herself she did not give to us anymore." And when Sammy tries to lure Jeff to out sea, using a bleach bottle as a training tool, he is sure Jeff could live happily ever after with him: "It must have seemeed such a simple answer to all our troubles."
"Aransas" is set on Port Aransas, Aransas Pass, and Corpus Christi — all destinations in the heart of the Texas coast I've been visiting my entire life. Not because they're all that special, but because something about them feels like home. As soon as I finished the book I was ready to throw together a bag, hop in my truck, and be at the ferry by dark, to watch the porpoises swim alongside.
Early and late in the novel is a reference to a mosaic of Christ the Good Shepherd in a hospital lobby. The image provides fitting bookends to the story.
Aransas
Bless the innocent flock
grazing in the rhythmic swells
with concern and grace.
Raise your hand to that halo.
Shield them from this light-flood,
from waters much too still.
–Megan Willome
June 21, 2025
For anyone who knows and loves Port Aransas, Texas this book is required reading. It is beautifully immersive in its sense of place, and you will feel like you are in Port Aransas the entire time. This book wrestles with very complicated topics and does not at all champion a clear moral imperative but asks us to ponder how we view animals.
May 14, 2020
Compelling and Unsettling
Stephen Harrigan has become one of my favorite living writers, and this book shows why. He draws the relationship between the protagonist and a pair of dolphins in a way that makes me yearn to live it and at the same time worry along with the protagonist about its ethics. A beautifully written book that I highly recommend.
Stephen Harrigan has become one of my favorite living writers, and this book shows why. He draws the relationship between the protagonist and a pair of dolphins in a way that makes me yearn to live it and at the same time worry along with the protagonist about its ethics. A beautifully written book that I highly recommend.
February 10, 2021
Very interesting to go back to the earliest book of a favorite writer. Plus visit a landscape and town I first knew 40 years ago. Another time, another place.
Like the sentimentality of a man’s attachment to the dolphins.
Like the sentimentality of a man’s attachment to the dolphins.
January 28, 2020
Gripping first novel of joy, enlightenment, love, and sacrifice. Sets the frame of what yet to become.
September 12, 2022
Port Aransas is the most beautiful beach in America
February 27, 2024
This is just a sweet story that I really enjoyed. The characters are (mostly) lovable and fully developed for the most part. I live on the Gulf Coast of Texas and am very familiar with the areas described in the various settings of Aransas. The setting, the characters, and the story plot all combined into a very enjoyable book that I would recommend to fellow Texans.
January 25, 2010
A beautiful depiction of coastal South Texas!
November 27, 2014
captured that part of the coast really well
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews