Page 16 - CulturalAdventures3 final

eenlaw fishes f readers

w h adventures at sea and ash e

By A lene Benham

Phot s courtesy of Linda G eenlaw

Girls take fishing world by Storm
Linda Greenlaw had no intention of becoming a writer. Although she majored in English in college, summers working on a swordfish
boat led to her passion of commercial fishing, and she never had the desire to do anything else. She was a sword-boat captain during
the events of the “Perfect Storm” in 1991; the nor’easter claimed the Andrea Gail and its crew of six, and Linda, fishing several hundred
miles away, was the last person to speak with them. With the success of Sebastian Junger’s chronicle of the storm, publishers began
requesting a book from her.
Linda didn’t return the first call from a New York publisher. Although she said she’s always been a good storyteller, despite encourage-
ment from family and friends to write about her fishing adventures she’d had no interest. “But the calls kept coming,” she said, “and
I realized I would be missing an opportunity.” Her English background meant she knew the “mechanics” of writing, and the editorial
guidance was mostly about making her descriptions more accessible to non-fishermen readers. “I thought I’d be a one-book wonder,”
she said, but The Hungry Ocean was a bestseller, and it was soon followed by two more about fishing and life on tiny Isle au Haut,
and a cookbook co-authored with her mother Martha.

Following these successes, the publisher wanted more, but Linda said, “I felt I didn’t
have any more to say about my life, myself, or fishing.” The publisher suggested try-
ing her hand at murder mysteries, so she signed a contract for three. While she hadn’t
been an avid mystery reader, she read Sue Grafton’s books on the long journeys back
and forth from fishing.
To begin with, she thought fiction would be easier – “You make stuff up,” starting with
a blank slate where everything is possible, but instead she found it more difficult. Some
research was necessary, although she said the internet makes a lot of that very easy. The
research provided some facts for credibility, such as forensic details. Settings and char-
acters are fictionalized versions of places and people she knows. She prefers shorter
“cozy” mysteries over scary ones, and has written four murder mysteries featuring small
town-Maine detective Jane Bunker.

Amid the mysteries, she co-authored another cookbook and wrote an account of her re-
turn to swordfishing 10 years later, then a memoir about the unexpected adventure of
becoming a troubled teen’s legal guardian – the hardest one to write.

Fishing and writing are both hard work, and both fairly solitary, Linda said. Although
she had a crew when fishing, they were still in a sort of “bubble” out on the Grand Banks.
However, the image of the secluded writer “pounding the keys and tearing through the
pages: has not been her experience. “I have to drag my characters through the books
page by page,” she said. “It’s the hardest work I’ve ever done.” Then there is the anxi-
ety over whether the publisher will like her polished manuscript or how book talks will
be received.

14 Cooking up a Storm