North by Northwestern: A Seafaring Family on Deadly Alaskan Waters (Abridged)

For Sig Hansen and his brothers, commercial fishing is as much a part of their Norwegian heritage as their names. Descendents of the Vikings who roamed and ruled the northern seas for centuries, the Hansens' connection to the sea stretches from Alaska to Seattle and all the way to Norway. And after 20 years as a skipper on the commercial fishing vessel the Northwestern amp;mdash; which was his father's before him - Sig has lived to tell the tales.

Sig first went out onto the Bering Sea on the Northwestern at the age of 12, and every summer after that until he graduated high school. With its brutal storms of 40-foot waves, gale winds, freezing spray and treacherous ice-cover, the Bering Sea is a true frontier, deadly in its unpredictability. To be a successful fisherman, you need to be a mechanic, navigator, welder, painter, carpenter, and sometimes, a firefighter. To be a successful fisherman year after year, you need to be a survivor.

This is the story of a family of survivors; part memoir and part adventure tale, Northwestern Saga brings readers on deck, into the dockside bars and into the history of a family with a common destiny.

A Macmillan Audio production.