Arctic Solace

by Michael Gibson

Layering the practical and fanciful, clipping on imagined lifesavers, mentally fingering distant places and people and things to rest the crazed and rumpled gaze, Gibson tersely and swiftly cobbles a stubbornly practical story of what it is to be a crabber on the Bering Sea. No one would bother making any of this up. With no one to count on but each other, driven to excesses of hatred and affection, contempt and indifference, managing competence in a maelstrom of exhaustion and fear, no wonder a bunch of bilge rats shaken in a putrid tin bucket bite each others’ tails.

160 pages, Kindle Edition

First published August 31, 2015