2182 Khz

This book really does a good job capturing the Arctic where people who are not quite "normal" make absurd amounts of money in absurd conditions. I do think drug testing has likely put an end to stoned-out-of-their-minds tugboat skippers. Likewise GPS has put an end to not having a clue where the hell you are. If you have ever made uncertain landfall in those pre-GPS days, praying your sun sight or RDF bearing was right while crossing it with a tempermental Loran, you will love this book.

Mr. Masiel tells a riveting story of life in the arctic oilfields from the POV of the Tug-and-barge maritime service crews that deliver the supplies to the operation of Prudhoe Bay and beyond. This is a previously untold story of a perilous line of work in an area that is very much in the news today as it was a decade ago when opening up drilling in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge first took center stage in the energy debate. Masiel paints a dim picture of life in the arctic, as it is. I worked there myself in Kaktovik as a biologist, but I was in far less danger the characters in this novel were on a daily basis. Vividly described, this is a must read for anyone who wants to understand what working in the arctic is really like.

I picked up this book after reading Annie Proulx's incredible review for Book-of-the-Month Club and was not disappointed. She called it the best sea story in a long time, and I concur without hesitation. In some ways, Masiel's work is a revival of the great nautical fiction of the 19th century--echoes of Melville and Conrad appear like watermarks in an otherwise tightly-paced adventure with more than a little punk edge, where disaffected characters migrate to a hostile, even anti-social land to make their livings. At times it reads almost like a memoir, but this only strengthens the unconventional quality of this book. How refreshing to read something that DOES NOT follow genre conventions but instead tells a real story that puts character ahead of plot. If you look at it on the surface, I suppose one could argue that the rescue of a lost scientist fits into a Hollywood formula. But the fact is, the story doesn't read that way, but instead as an honest quest on the part of the main character to rid himself of his own regrets in life. A ferryman of the dead indeed.

Couched in a macho rollercoaster ride off the North Face of Alaska, this novel has at its core the exposed and gentle beating heart of a great novelist. David Masiel's first novel, largely autobiographical, tells the story of a desperate man's search for forgiveness and love in the most improbable of places: the harsh and life-endangering ice floes of the Beaufort Sea. Henry Siene (pronounced Sane) has sentenced himself, like the other often amazingly rich and damaged characters up there, to doing hard time in one of the most punishing and highest mortality jobs on earth - working the offshore oil rigs and ocean-going tugs of the arctic circle. He can't forgive himself, and so he cannot connect emotionally with others, except the equally macho strutting characters of the North. When an improbable affair reawakens his confused heart, he begins a search for redemption - and finds it in a desperate rescue mission of what he believe to be a trapped scientist, who's faint voice he hears fading in and out over 2182 kHz - the international distress frequency - and who may or may not be out there in the breaking floes. Melville has nothing on David Masiel. A great summer read, and an unforgettable and moving story.

I was sucked into this story the minute I began reading its New York Times book review. I never would have picked it up off the shelf without some promting because it looks like it's just a boy's book about ships and storms. I loved this novel though! Masiel gets your attention from the first scene. "Oh geezzz! How can he start with THAT!" I laughed out loud. He pulled me into environmental, social, and sexual issues when I wasn't looking and gave me plenty to ponder long after I sailed through the book. The story only has two women in it, and only one named Juila that you actually get to know. She's a woman's woman, though, who rescues the main character from his sinking ship and seems to be the real balast in an otherwise trubulent sea of men. She's the exact mixture of dedicated, self reliant, and sexually secure that makes you proud to be a woman. You know Masiel loves and appreciates real women as well as real men by the way he renders their actions and reactions. He seeps into the complexity of their thinking until he brings you to some real insight at the end of the book. Masiel pours unexpected images over each page, keeping you surprised as well as suspended out in the middle of nowhere with him. When you close the book, you'll just smile. Don't let the cover throw you off. A ship in a storm is not the point of the story, but more of a way to talk about some universal truths that are usually hidden at the bottom of the sea.