Time Bandit

Time Bandit: Two Brothers, the Bering Sea, and One of the World's Deadliest Jobs

Andy and Johnathan Hillstrand

With Malcom McPherson

2008, Ballantine Books, $25.00 USA

 

This is a non-fiction account of the lives of Bering Sea fishermen which both startled and delighted me. Apparently, these two Hillstrand brothers are featured on a Discovery Channel show The Deadliest Catch. The book is a bit hard to breeze through: don't expect to whip through this in a weekend. The storyline, although extremely passionate and interesting, is a bit choppy as the authors wade through a mesh of several sea stories and combine these stories along a background of the biography of the two brothers, told from alternating points of view. Did you get all that? Yeah, I thought so. BUT amazing lines like "we are not afraid of the sea; we are terrified of the water" and "death followed us, like a spy" keep me enthralled. Johnathan Hillstrand is a daring sailor with the heart of a poet. His chapters are chock full of expressions which range from deeply spiritual to plain old expletives. Andy Hillstrand 's chapters are thoughtful and future focused, contemplations of a man sharing life on land while wedded to the ocean. There is a great deal of eye opening material about life on the Bering Sea, the port towns which surround it, and the fishing industry. A good read. Overall, on the heat scale, "mighty toasty".