THE LOBSTER WAR, by Ethan Howland, Front Street/Cricket Books, Chicago, 2001, 146 pages, $15.95.

It can be very hard to come of age right now in Maine. Many of our teens and young adults must grapple with the realization that the traditional industries – manufacturing and lobstering, for example – that have sustained their families and communities for generations are becoming increasingly out of reach.

They must explore new options. But what is out there for them? And how do they discover new possibilities when all the folks they look up to have remained within this vocation and lifestyle?

One of the most fascinating books my 11-year-old daughter, Amber, and I have discovered this summer, Ethan Howland’s “The Lobster War,” combines a sensitive study of this identity question with an impossible-to-put-down mystery. In the summer before his senior year in high school Dain Harrington is lobstering. After graduation he plans to take up that vocation full time.

It’s the one thing he’s sure of, the one thing that makes sense to him. The vocation runs in his family and he’s good at it. His boat, the Rita Marie, is a crucial part of his identity. “She had been Dad’s and was named after my mother – it made me feel good to be using her.”

But his mother has other ideas. She’s lost her husband to the sea. She’s given up on Dain’s older brother, Eddie, a high school dropout and lobsterman who is drifting away from her ideas and values. So her hopes are now pinned on her younger boy.

To Dain, his mother’s plans seem to stem from an inability to accept him for who he is. In his mind the college brochures she piles on his bed are all wrong for him. “They were full of pictures of good-looking students, brick buildings and green lawns. You wouldn’t find someone like me in those pictures with my torn flannels and frayed blue jeans, with fish scales caught in my hair and muck on my hands.”

While Dain is trying to sort out what he will do, someone begins cutting his lobster traps. Unsure what to do, he turns to Eddie for advice as he’s done all his life. But Eddie is rooming and lobstering with Roger, a bully who is Dain’s prime suspect. Eddie’s only advice to his brother echoes Roger’s threats: Dain had better stay out of the Narrows. Dain decides to find out who is trying to steal his territory even though his close friend Sonny tells him that Eddie may be deeply involved.

Ominous signs are on the horizon for the whole community. A man from the Department of Marine Resources posts notices for a meeting about lobster stocks. Concerns are being raised about overfishing.

Author Howland grew up in Harpswell on the coast, where some of his friends became lobstermen. Sometimes they would take him out on the water. In creating the character of Dain, he drew on the feelings of confusion he experienced in his late teens. “You’re becoming independent. You’re trying to figure out what you want to do, how you feel about things, how families work.”

Howland also identifies with Sonny, a character who injects an element of hope into the story. She works on the wharf with her family and plans to study marine biology – “She loves water and seeing things underwater.”

Howland plans to follow up with a second book. His problem is finding the time. The proud father of two very young daughters, he finds that parenting and journalism take up most of his days. Amber and I predict that his next novel will be well worth the wait.