Excerpt from The End of the Line by Charles Clover, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

The motel restaurant was closed for the winter. The rooms were surprisingly basic given the capital value of the pleasure craft and the bluefin tuna fishing vessels moored or lifted out of the water around it. The night watchman and the desk clerk discussed the options briefly and pronounced that the only place I could get a square meal at that hour was at Franklin’s on Main Street.

Franklin’s turned out to be the best place in town. It had a smallish facade. Behind there was the sound of a modern jazz duet being sung. It was dark inside, which was off-putting, but after the achingly hip and rather disinterested staff had cleared a table and produced a menu, I realized this place was hot, at least as hot as Gloucester got. On the wine list were some of the finer New Zealand whites and the best California pinot noirs.

© 2006 by Charles Clover. This piece originally appears in Charles Clover’s The End of the Line: How Overfishing Is Changing the World and What We Eat (The New Press, November 13, 2006). Published with the permission of The New Press and available at good book stores everywhere.