Hatteras Blues: A Story from the Edge of America

When young Ernal Foster spent his life savings to build a juniper-hulled sportfishing boat in 1937, he gave birth to what would become the multimillion-dollar charter fishing industry on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. Today, Ernal's son, Captain Ernie Foster, struggles to keep the family business alive in a time of great change on the Outer Banks. "Hatteras Blues" is their story--a story of triumph and loss, of sturdy Calvinist values and pell-mell American progress, and of fate and luck as capricious as the weather. Within the engaging saga of the rise and decline of one family's livelihood, Tom Carlson relates the high-adrenaline experience of blue-water sportfishing and the precarious early development of Hatteras Village in the heart of "Hurricane Alley." In recording this story, the author unexpectedly finds himself becoming part of it. Struggling to come to terms with the illness and death of his wife to a degenerative disease, Carlson learns a lesson from the Fosters--and the townspeople--in how to prepare for absence and loss, and then how to grieve with some measure of grace and dignity.