"We felt untouchable," was how he explained it. "We felt like there was no way that God could do that to the same families twice."
By the time I talked with Ricky, the book had—against all expectations—become a bestseller, and I was spending a lot of time in Gloucester, staying at the Crow's Nest, showing media people around a town. It was an odd feeling: I remembered Gloucester as a grey, rocky town where I supported myself doing treework and wondering, at age thirty, exactly where my life was going. Now here I was, giving television interviews from the Nest while the regulars tried to ignore the lights and keep drinking their beer. When people said I'd put Gloucester on the map, I replied that it was more like Gloucester had put me on the map. There were any number of people—Chris, Ethel, local fishermen—without whom I could not have written this book. Had they not lived the lives they did, and agreed to talk with me about them, the book would not exist. In that sense, I'm indebted to them; in that sense, the book is as much their work as mine. Writers often don't know much about the world they're trying to describe, but they don't necessarily need to. They just need to ask a lot of questions. And then they need to step back and let the story speak for itself.
NEW YORK CITY
January 11, 1998