THE WIDTH OF THE SEA

New York: Cliff Street Books. Near Fine in Very Good+ dust jacket. 2001. First Edition. Hardcover. 0060199083 . HC/DJ - near fine/VG. Pages clean and tight other than name stamp on first page, very light soiling to outer edge of pages. Jacket has some scuffing with a little edge crinkling, couple light creases, light wear at corners. ; 8vo; Earnest and closely observed, Chalfoun's second novel (after Roustabout) chronicles the lives of a small crew of fishermen and their families, who endure the demise of the fishing industry. Times are tough in the fictional New England town of Rosaline. The seas are overfished; the reconstruction of an antique schooner, the Shardon Rose, forces the fishermen off the piers; and the government announces an Emergency Buyback Package, which encourages fishermen to scuttle their boats and quit the business. Struggling to make it are the men of the Pearl, a fishing vessel owned by Warren Fitz and crewed in part by his son, John, and John's best friend, Chris Albin. Pride-bound, Warren Fitz is loathe to take "The Package," so John prodded by Chris, a longtime but functioning junkie tries to run drugs from one of the French islands off the coast of Newfoundland. It's here, as Chalfoun sets her characters on a collision course, that the novel's slowly churning engine kicks in and builds real, satisfying momentum. (670) .