Fisherman's Wife

Fisherman's Wife has resurfaced again as one of the most captivating pieces of prose.... captures many of the hardships and uncertainties faced by those who lived off the sea on that barren island in those days. But its value as historical documentary is overshadowed by what is, in essence, a love story.
— Asbury Park Press

Rich with details of island life... The story is told with unsparing honesty by Jo, formerly a well-paid journalist in New York who had traveled the world. Now, as a fisherman's wife pregnant, living in a tiny cottage, cooking on a smoky oil stove she worries whenever her husband is late coming home, fearing that he has drowned. As they face the threats of poverty, storms and isolation, however, the two make sacrifices and draw closer together in a way that would not have been possible in their former lifestyle.
— The Beachcomber

“Modern readers, enduring their own economic problems, can sympathize with the young couple struggling to survive the Depression.”
— The Press of Atlantic City

First published by Scribner's in 1933, the story tells in careful, succinct and powerful prose what life was like for a couple of former Lost Generation swells who found themselves suddenly broke, pregnant and literally bottomed-out on Barnegat Bay at the very bottom of the Depression.
— The Star-Ledger

A tender love story of the early 1930s…touching, elegantly illustrated.”
— The SandPaper

A moving story.
— The Beachcomber

“Moving black-and-white woodcut illustrations add an emotional touch to this profound story; highly recommended.”
— Wisconsin Bookwatch

Benjamin Franklin National Book Awards finalist: Autobiography/Memoirs

EXCERPT
The wind off the Atlantic is raw at four o’clock in the morning, even in summer, and I pull my sweater closer about my throat as Tom and I walk down the sandy road between the tarpaper shacks where the fishermen live. The long, low fish shed on the dock and the high round shaft of Barnegat Lighthouse are beginning to take form out of the darkness. The slightly sour smell of Barnegat Bay salt marshes is strong in the air.



The waves lap softly against the fishing skiffs tied in orderly rows along the breakwater. The fishermen, awkward in rubber hip-boots and stiff yellow oilskins, shuffle clumsily past the piles of wooden boxes and wire baskets to stow their gear and tin lunch cans in their boats.
They make their preparations swiftly and with little to say beyond an occasional speculative comment about the weather.



“What you think about it, Axel?” The names one hears are like that — Axel and Olaf, Sven and Hans. Except for Tom and two or three native Barnegaters, these men of the fishing fleet are Scandinavians with the blood of seafaring Norsemen in their veins.



Axel scans the sky, the stars overhead, the faint pinkish glow on the eastern horizon. “Looks all right to me.”



The other is getting the feel of the wind. “I don’t think she shift before night.”



Tom climbs down into his skiff and does something with a monkey wrench. There is a staccato sputter, and the motor starts with a roar. As it warms up, he pulls on oilskins and boots, and listens to the speculation about the weather. Axel, the acknowledged weather prophet, takes another long look at the sky.
“I think she is a good day. I shove off,” he announces.



When one man starts the others follow. Tom kisses me good-bye, and Olaf Svenson in the next boat looks embarrassed and nudges his partner. These Scandinavians would rather lose a day’s catch of fish than be seen in a public gesture of affection toward their wives.



Lines are cast off, motors throttled down, and one by one the huge gray sea-skiffs slip out of the dock basin. Tom’s boat leaves a scimitar of foam in its wake as it rounds a bend in the channel and disappears behind the low sand dunes, and I have my last glimpse of him as he stands at the tiller, fastening his oilskins more securely. It will be wet going through the narrow inlet where the tide is running swiftly out of Barnegat Bay and meeting the big rollers of the Atlantic.



The last boat is lost in the early morning grayness, and inside me is the dull emptiness I feel every time Tom puts to sea. I walk back down the road to where the flivver is parked, beside the little lunch room where two fish-truck drivers are going in for early morning coffee and fried potatoes. They glance at me curiously as I hurry along, and one asks the other a question. The answer comes to me clearly in the still morning air:



“Her? Oh, just one of the fishermen’s wives.”