The presence of hurricane (well, by then, tropical storm) Charley was just beginning to be felt in Rehoboth last Saturday night as I met up with friends perched on stools at a local bar. It had been the kind of day that never really emerged from a gray, misty morning, and darkness seemed to roll in earlier than usual. The increasing wind and waterfalls of rain pouring off the roofs in the alley outside provided us with the perfect inspiration for a longer-than-usual visit. After peeling (and eating) an embarrassing quantity of steamed shrimp, however, I remembered that the local bookstore was hosting author and commercial fisherman Linda Greenlaw, who was signing copies of her latest book, All Fishermen Are Liars. Since one of the women in our group claims she is a fisherman (we’ve never actually seen her in action) and her favorite fishing maxim is "All fishermen are liars except for you and me, and I’m not so sure about you," I dragged her out into the rain and down the street to meet a woman with a most interesting career.

Linda Greenlaw has spent virtually her whole adult life fishing. She left her small Maine island village only to attend college, then returned to the area and began the grueling work of commercial fishing. She worked her way up to captaining her own swordfish boat, the Hannah Boden, which was the sister ship to the boat lost in Junger’s 1999 book A Perfect Storm. Greenlaw was portrayed as a major character in the movie of the same name and published her own account of that terrible storm at sea, The Hungry Ocean, in 2000, which I reviewed for Letters when it was first released. I originally found her non-traditional choice of careers intriguing, but I came away from that book, as well as her subsequent books, admiring how much her gender was not an issue. Greenlaw isn’t trying to prove one single thing about women’s rights; she just wants to catch fish, which is somehow even more inspiring.

As my friend and I dodged puddles and umbrella spokes to catch the tail end of the signing, I wondered what Greenlaw would look like in person. From her writing, I learned that commercial fishing is both dangerous and laborious. Her book jacket photograph showed a grinning, capable and sensible-looking woman; when we arrived at the store, however, I realized I had imagined her as a much larger woman. Actually fairly petite, Greenlaw was quiet and straightforward, simply dressed in pants and Teva sandals. I marveled (silently) how much muscle and strength must be contained in that small frame.

Greenlaw’s most recent two books are slightly different from one another. When readers last saw the author at the end of The Hungry Ocean, she was contemplating a major change in lifestyle. The tragedy of that huge storm seemed to take a lot out of her. As she explains in The Lobster Chronicles, Greenlaw moved home to be with her parents and take a break from the long swordfishing excursions, which could put her off-island and out at sea for months at a time. Her apparently boundless energy could not be contained, however, and she found the need to return to the sea. As a compromise with herself or perhaps a new challenge, Greenlaw decided to try lobster fishing, another huge commercial industry for her native Maine. She enlisted the help of her seventy-odd year old father and bought her own vessel, the Mattie Belle. Greenlaw walks her readers through a typical season preparing for and trapping lobsters. Awash with interesting details and facts about the industry and process, the book also offers humorous glimpses into island life and the many characters that call the Isle au Haut home.

Greenlaw’s most recent book, however, is a slightly different style, one most appropriate for that particular evening when I met the author. Interested in branching out into more fictional writing, Greenlaw decided to put together a narrative that includes several old-fashioned sea stories particular to her area of Maine. The format for her prose suits the subject matter well; the author and her favorite fishing mentor, Alden, whom readers will remember from The Hungry Ocean, spend an extended—albeit liquid-y—lunch (impressively long into the evening hours) at a Portland bar, a favorite haunt of fishermen and business people alike. Under the guise of engaging Alden with some reminiscing and telling of fishing stories, Greenlaw tries to talk Alden into retiring from fishing because of his failing health. Readers are privy to both tiers of this frame tale, both the camaraderie in the bar and the stories told there. Tales range from a pot-smuggling fishing fugitive to Caribbean controversies. Contributing to the general noise and confusion are the bumbling and incorrigible Island Boys, a dangerously funny duo first appearing in The Lobster Chronicles. The stories are interspersed with what Greenlaw calls "Bar Snacks," brief vignettes or fun facts about fishing, such as the ten most common lies fishermen tell, a list that includes the old standby, "You should have seen the one that got away."

Martha the fisherman (Greenlaw insists that fishing terminology remain free of political correctness) and I tromped back through the rain with our newly-signed copies (okay, they’re hers, but I told her she had to read The Hungry Ocean and The Perfect Storm first, which allowed me to read the new books right away-heh heh). Back at the bar, our partners were bravely waiting out the storm by keeping the bartender busy and our seats warm. We all settled in and passed the wet evening swapping stories and sharing laughs. A few boating and fishing tales even surfaced, including Martha’s "one that got away," an hours-long battle with a mysteriously large "fish". She freely admits (when plied with several vodka shots) that she didn’t actually ever see the fish that dragged her in a sixteen foot fishing boat some thirty miles offshore, but she’s sure it must have been huge. With no available witnesses to this epic sea-tale, she is free to fulfill the time-honored tradition of fine fishermen everywhere by lying her pants off.