Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Apr 2012
320 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
Every fall, the men of Loyalty Island sail from the Olympic Peninsula up to the Bering Sea to spend the winter catching king crab. Their dangerous occupation keeps food on the table but constantly threatens to leave empty seats around it.
To Cal, Alaska remains as mythical and mysterious as Treasure Island, and the stories his father returns with are as mesmerizing as those he once invented about Captain Flint before he turned pirate. But while Cal is too young to accompany his father, he is old enough to know that everything depends on the fate of those few boats thousands of miles to the north. He is also old enough to feel the tension between his parents over whether he will follow in his father's footsteps. And old enough to wonder about his mother's relationship with John Gaunt, owner of the fleet.
Then Gaunt dies suddenly, leaving the business in the hands of his son, who seems intent on selling away the fishermen's livelihood. Soon Cal stumbles on evidence that his father may have taken extreme measures to salvage their way of life. As winter comes on, his suspicions deepening and his moral compass shattered, he is forced to make a terrible choice.
"Though there are hints of precocious brilliance, too often the novel reads as pastiche." - Publishers Weekly
"Dybek has created a superbly orchestrated and soulful drama of loyalty to family and an imperiled way of life and the fathomless forces that make a good man go bad." - Booklist
"A captivating, literary coming-of-age novel." - Library Journal
"No Deadliest Catch, but rather literary fiction as morality play." - Kirkus Reviews
"Complex and suspenseful... Dybek manages to create [a] genuine tragedy-powerful, mythic, unforgettable." - Jaimy Gordon, author of Lord of Misrule
This information about When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Nick Dybek is a graduate of the University of Michigan and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He is the recipient of a Hopwood Award for short fiction, a Maytag Fellowship, and a 2010 James Michener- Copernicus Society of America Award. Dybek lives in New York City.
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