JONATHAN RABAN is the author of the novels Surveillance and Waxwings; his nonfiction works include Passage to Juneau, Bad Land, and Driving Home. His honors include the National Book Critics Circle Award, the PEN/West Creative Nonfiction Award, the Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, and the Governor’s Award of the State of Washington. He died in 2023.
"A work of great beauty and inexhaustible fervor." —The Washington
Post Book World
"Endlessly suggestive.... Nobody now writing keeps a more
provocative house than Jonathan Raban." —The New York Times Book
Review
"A great book by the very best contempoary writer afloat." —The
Oregonian
"Raban is a super-sensitive, all-seeing eye. He spots things we
might otherwise miss; he calls up the apt metaphors that transform
things into phenomenal. One of our most gifted
observers." —Newsday
Fans of Raban's chronicles of America's history (including the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning Bad Land) will find another side of the author in this introspective and quite personal new work. Long fascinated by the Inside Passage (the protected waterway that runs from Washington State up to Alaska), Raban casts off in his 35' ketch from his home port in Seattle to follow in the wake of generations of salmon fishermen. He draws a rather dark portrait of the region as he fills out its history, through the cranky journals of Captain Vancouver and others, and meditates on the beautiful but threatening and lonesome landscape, with its struggling communities, submerged mountains, tricky waters, and names like Deception Pass and Desolation Sound. When his trip gets interrupted by his father's death, and he finds himself increasingly cut off from his young daughter and wife (by a series of broken phones in economically depressed ports of call and by emotional distance), Raban's journey becomes an extremely personal one. Although the end result is a bit overlong, this is ultimately a fascinating and informative read. Recommended for public libraries.ÄRebecca Miller, "Library Journal" Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.
"A work of great beauty and inexhaustible fervor." -The
Washington Post Book World
"Endlessly suggestive.... Nobody now writing keeps a more
provocative house than Jonathan Raban." -The New York Times Book
Review
"A great book by the very best contempoary writer afloat." -The
Oregonian
"Raban is a super-sensitive, all-seeing eye. He spots things we
might otherwise miss; he calls up the apt metaphors that transform
things into phenomenal. One of our most gifted observers."
-Newsday
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