Great true story of the sinking of a large fishing ship near Alaska and the heroic rescue efforts of the Coast Guard. It has a lot of interesting details. ( )

So far, so good, though a bit slow. It took nearly 100 pages to get one chopper in the air.

I decided to read this because the supernatural woo-woo at the end of The Guardian was so awful. I'd like to have more positive mental association with the Coast Guard.

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Once the rescue gets moving, it picks up. At one point a rescue chopper throws out their own life raft and leaves their rescue swimmer behind so they can transport more people back to the cutter. The rescue swimmer pulls another three people into the raft and alternates caring for them and looking for more survivors.

Well worth a read, and I was sufficiently involved the whole story (safety as well as rescue) to hunt down the final USCG Marine Board Report on the accident, finished after the book went to press. I recommend reading the summary of that report after you finish this book.

So skip "The Guardian" and read this instead. Available from the Palo Alto Library.
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In 2008, a fishing trawler sunk in the Bearing Sea in Alaskan waters. There were 47 people on board. They were hours away from any help, but Coast Guard helicopters made their way there, along with a ship to help rescue as many people as possible.

The book started off a little “slower” (though still good), with cutting back and forth between the sinking of the boat and background information. At times, I found it a bit hard to follow… but only at first. As the book continued on, I got to know the people better (though there were a lot of people, so it was still easy to get some of them mixed up), so it helped me “place” where we were in the story (whether “current” timeline or background info on the people, or the history of the area, or the fishing industry, or whatever). In the end, I thought it was really good. The book was primarily put together based on interviews with the people involved. ( )

A well written, well researched account of the disaster. The author conducted extensive interviews and made use of published reports and recordings. It is well set out and easy to follow despite the chaotic events described. Yet it is not a cold description of events. The people involved are real and they are written in three dimensions. A very good telling. I would recommend to readers who are interested in real life disasters, the Alaskan fishing industry and sea search and rescue. ( )

Too much on the individual members, not enough on the rescue. Not bad, but not gripping. ( )