Calm at Sunset, Calm at Dawn

Summary

James Pfeiffer will do almost anything to have his own boat, even if it means dropping out of college, disappointing his family, and exposing himself to the hard, dangerous, and often cruel world on board a scallop trawler. 

But James is beguiled by the sea in much the same perilous way of his grandfather, and in the bittersweet, stoical way of his father, who made a living for his family fishing off the New England coast. 

In his 20th year James is also at a crossroads: displaced at school, displaced at home, he feels most at ease with himself at sea, where the immeasurable hours take on a doleful, hypnotic quality, and the crew wavers between a numbing fear of failing or of simply not surviving. 

Preserving life and limb and earning money to save for his own lobster boat are simple things compared to his father’s wrath. Relentlessly ambitious and paradoxically disdainful of a fisherman’s life, his father is a difficult and imposing obstacle. 

Pfeiffer is willing to pay the price for his dream—in blood, sweat, and cold cash—but it may cost him the respect of the one person he needs most.