The Compass Rose

Just remember kid,
everything out here either rots or rusts,” the old timer warns. “And if your girlfriend hasn’t left you yet, she will.”

So begins Burke Stillwell’s introduction to the world of Oregon’s tough winter crab fishermen, where men routinely face hundred-knot winds in small boats and just as routinely die when they push the envelope too far in a savage battle to survive in a vanishing trade.

Plunged among the fishers who hunt the watery avalanches for a living, Burke finds the vivid and unforgettable characters who people this trade: Men who go to sea to fight with the memory of their fathers, those who are fighting their lives on land, and those who travel beyond the breakers because they are meant to, and can think of doing nothing else.

But Burke’s own journey into the ocean’s crucible is complicated when he falls in love with a mysterious young woman. Both love and the ocean become transforming forces that connect him with his innermost destiny, even as a violent and indifferent world swirls around him and his brothers continue to slip beyond his grasp into an ever harsher existence.

Uncompromising in its examination of the world’s most dangerous job and the hearts of those who go down to the sea in ships, THE COMPASS ROSE is a coming of age tale for all seasons.