Product Description

Spike Walker has spent more than a decade fishing in the subzero hell of Alaska's coastal waters. This collection--coming on the heels of his classic memoir Working on the Edge--is a testament to the courage of those who brave nature's wrath each fishing season, and to the uncontrolled power of nature herself... The crewmen in Nights of Ice face a constant onslaught of roaring waves, stories-high swells, and life-stealing ice. Tested by the elements, these seamen battle for their vessels and their lives, on every page evincing a level of courage and a will to live seldom found elsewhere in modern society.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #18181 in Books
• Published on: 1999-02-28
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

From Amazon.com
Frantic and entertaining in a guilty sort of way, Nights of Ice is like Endurance on steroids. The book presents eight true stories of disaster and survival involving commercial fisherman off the coast of Alaska (said to be one of America's most dangerous occupations). Included are tales of subzero temperatures, 100 mph winds, 60-foot-high waves, boats encased in ice and capsized, men trapped underwater, and other horrors. Author Spike Walker, who interviewed many of the survivors in compiling this book, is no stranger to such tales of the high seas; he worked as a commercial fisherman off the Alaska coast and wrote about it in Working on the Edge.

Nights of Ice begins promisingly enough but unfortunately gives way to a sensationalism that cheapens the whole affair: "At that moment, Bruce Hinman's past life flashed before his very eyes. Launched instantaneously through time, he watched the events of his life play out before him...they flashed and froze there in his consciousness, in a kind of nostalgic collage of all that had once mattered in his life." As a result, there are a lot of unintentionally funny moments. Despite its problems, though, Nights of Ice is fun to read, and lovers of true-adventure stories or those interested in the dangers of the Alaskan fishing industry should enjoy it. --Andy Boynton

From Library Journal
Stories of disaster and survival in commercial fishing boats working the Alaskan coast make up this sequel to Walker's Working on the Edge (LJ 6/15/91). These eight stories of fishermen whose trips went sour are harrowing, but the book's overall effect is numbing rather than exciting. Although no one would deny the suffering and loss experienced by the survivors, their stories are pretty much alike. Walker does not have a particularly deft style, nor, in this volume, does he provide any great insight into conditions in the king-crab trade. Only libraries that purchased the earlier book and are particularly interested in the subject should take the trouble to acquire this.?Edwin B. Burgess, U.S. Army Combined Arms Research Lib., Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
The Bering Sea in January can be a mean place, as Walker (Working on the Edge, 1991) relates in this spine-tingling (if redundant) collection--particularly when the winds clip by at 100 mph, the waves crest at 60 feet, the water temperature is 38 degrees, it's nightime, and your boat is sinking. Walker has no time for foreshadowing here, no time to develop mood or characters. These are grab-you-by-the-throat, rip-snorting tales of disaster on furious high seas and of the outrageous efforts made by both rescuers and those in the drink to beat the odds for survival in the Bering's icy waters. There is not much variation in these eight tales: In hellacious weather, a fishing vessel founders. Sometimes it runs aground or overturns with the accumulated weight of ice, or it just springs a leak. Then it all comes down to hypothermia and how fast it steals your life. The rescues are thus all just in the nick of time, and Walker plays them for all they're worth. But the lack of variety here, combined with Walker's tendency to overdeploy stock sentences--``His terror became resolve,'' and ``He thought of his lovely young wife,'' and ``This is the end!''--robs the stories of their specific identities. What saves the best ones is Walker's fastening on a particular element: the godawful storms, known as williwaws, that boom out of the coastal mountains, their impossible winds freighted with ice and snow (vigorously described in the chapter ``Chopper Rescue: Men in Peril''); or the cheekiness of Tim White (in the chapter titled ``The Face of an Angel''), who stayed warm by working hard at being a badass. It is said that America's most dangerous profession is commercial fishing on Alaska's high seas. Even a quick dip into this collection will convince you of that. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Customer Reviews

entertaining subject--marginal writing
I read this on a trip to Alaska, so I got into it's "spirit" on location. The stories are quite entertaining, but when writers make junior-varsity comments and mistakes, it makes me wonder about the veracity of the actual stories:
1) Does everyone see their entire lives flash before their eyes when they are near death?
2) Some guy's one-year old child asks him if he is Santa Claus upon his return from an ordeal at sea. Clearly Spike has never spent time with a one-year old; not only can very few of them speak more than a word or two, but this one is so eloquent and knowledgeable that he thinks the old man is Kris himself!
3) The helicopter pilot makes it to a "small village airport" just before running out of fuel (which means it must have been between 5-10 minutes from the rescue locale since they only had 30 minutes of fuel left before the rescue attempt(hmmmm), but somehow a C-130 can get in and out of there to send them home while the chopper gets an inspection (hmmm hmmmm).
I'll leave it at that...

Nights of Ice ... Spike Walker is great read
Having lived my entire life in and around Seattle, In March 2001, I ventured North to Alaska to visit my daughter and her family. While there I picked up "Nights of Ice".

Spike Walker's subject matter is, first of all, relevant to anyone who has lived near the sea. The Pacific Ocean, the Bering Sea and the Gulf of Alaska, as one non-fisherman said, "I can't drink it all and I'm damned sure I can't swim that far."

Life at sea in a boat, rolling and plowing through the next wave, gets into some folks blood. I'm sure it's that way with fishermen and women but the money don't hurt either. In any case its a perilous life.

Nights of Ice takes us along for a ride with people, real people, who have experienced the worst the sea has to offer. Walker's intimate knowledge of workin' the boats has us searching for lights in a "can't see your hand in front of your face" stateroom, attempting, frantically, to pull on the survival suit. We are terrified of the boat goin' down with us still on board. We gasp for air and our heart seems to stop when we hit the 37 degree water. We, along with actual survivors, use every ounce of strength and resource our bodies are able to muster in order to survive.

Nights of Ice and its individual, sometimes heroic, stories are an adventure in itself.

This book will make you shiver!
I enjoyed this book alot. All the stories deal with survival at sea in the waters off Alaska. The stories are kind of repetitive but if you like the first one you'll like the rest. The thought of finding one's self in the frigid Alaskan waters will make you pull an extra blanket on while you read. My only real complaint is that I would have liked more details on the fishermen involved (background, etc) so it wouldn't just have been names floating out there in the ocean. Overall, highly recommended adventure reading.