This book is wrenched from the cold blue and green and steel gray of Maine's coastal waters. It is distilled from fish houses hung with pot buoys, from traps stacked on the shore, from wheeling banks of gulls, from bait barrels, from bitter words and hopeful words and words spoken in anger, from gurry-covered $20 bills, from that one moment when the incoming trap breaks the ocean's surface and the lobster is there or is not. The cast of characters is large and varied, some of them just barely fictional, most of them entirely real. Lobster and lobsterman share about equal billing. This book is full of paradox because lobstering is a gut-wrenching paradoxical business. It is time the paradoxes were pulled from the sea's frigid heart and held up to the light of day. The book is anecdotal, uproarious, sober, and full of fact, and through it you will begin to understand what happens in the pierside shacks, the sardine packing plants, the co-ops, the dealers' wharves and pounds and buildings, the grange halls, the churches, the homes, and most important, in the boats and on the ocean bottom. Controversy is not ducked. Names are named. Feathers are ruffled. We hope Maine legislators read this book, and the governor, and the marine resources commissioner, and the lobstermen themselves. And we hope you will read it. Consider this a chance to get off U.S. Route 1 and away from the shops and restaurants and into Maine. Consider this a leisurely, informative Maine vacation, an extended tour through the whole gamut of the lobster industry. Personal, humorous, emotional, sad, and proud —the real story of Maine lobsters and the men who catch them.