When the fishing vessel, ‘La Conte’ sinks suddenly at night in one-hundred-mile-per-hour winds and record ninety-foot seas during a savage storm in January 1998, her five crewmen are left to drift without a life raft in the freezing Alaskan waters and survive as best they can.

One hundred and fifty miles away, in Sitka, Alaska, a H-60 Jayhawk helicopter lifts off from America’s most remote Coast Guard base in the hope of tracking down an anonymous Mayday signal. A fisherman’s worst nightmare has become a Coast Guard crew’s desperate mission. As the crew of the ‘La Conte’ begin to die one by one, those sworn to watch over them risk everything to pull off the rescue of the century.

In ‘Coming Back Alive‘, Spike Walker has crafted a gripping story of intense human drama. He leads you to the geography, history and people of the Alaskan fishing harbours, describes seven hours of extreme storm devastation and paints a unique portrait of the US Coast Guard’s search and rescue helicopter squads.

The heroic efforts of the Coast Guards in carrying out 50,000 search and rescue missions each year may not have been widely known, but in this internationally read book, their skill and courage are graphically illustrated as they risk life and limb to achieve a miracle rescue.

With his meticulous research, Walker weaves the narrative through eyewitness and survivors accounts and unemotionally reports the gruesome facts in all their harrowing details.

In the preface to his absorbing story Walker concludes:

“While some of the material herein is guite graphic in nature, it is my fervent hope that by writing about these events, similar predicaments in which young men die may be avoided altogether in the future, and that the soul-shaking grief and sense of utter aloneness felt by those left behind may one day be transcended.”

He also quotes an old Coast Guard saying:

“You have to go out, but you don’t necessarily have to come back.”

A brilliant work, loaded with adventure and suspense, a definitive guide to the perilous sea and the men who risk their lives to triumph over it.

The Author.

Spike Walker spent nine seasons as a crewman aboard some of the most successful crab boats in the Alaskan fleet. In addition to his crab-fishing experience, he has worked in the offshore oilfields of Louisiana and Texas, along the Mississippi River as a certified, commercial deep-sea diver, and in Washington, Oregon, Idaho,and Alaska as a logger.

His other published works are: ‘Working on the Edge‘, a memoir of his years as a deckhand in Alaska, and ‘Nights of Ice‘.

But it was his masterpiece, ‘Coming Back Alive’, published in 2001, that raised him to international stardom. His acclaimed book was a huge bestseller and an important addition to the literature of the sea.

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Another ‘Epic Sea Book’ is ‘THE CRYING SEA’ by Paddy Cummins.

Inspired by a true sea tragedy that occurred of the coast of Malta in 2008, it is a suspense-packed saga of harrowing human drama.

A superb read… A story that will remain with you forever.”

Read more at: www.bridgepublishing.net

Irish author.
Books: Three novels. Four collections of short stories and poems.
Latest novel: ‘The Crying Sea’
Lives in Ireland in summer and in Malta during winter months.       

 

 

 

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