Editor’s Note: Maine Bound is a column featuring new books written by authors from Maine or set in the Pine Tree State.

By Wayne E. Reilly

Special to the NEWS

THE DORYMAN’S REFLECTION: A FISHERMAN’S LIFE, by Paul Molyneaux, Thunder’s Mouth Press, New York, $25, hardcover, 226 pages.

Paul Molyneaux intertwines three plots: a coming-of-age story about a boy from Pennsylvania who decides to become a commercial fisherman, a history of the Owls Head fishing family he links up with in his quixotic quest, and the well-worn tale of the fishing industry’s decline.

Molyneaux manages to splice all these strands into one sturdy piece of line. Through his early inspiration looking at Edward Hopper paintings of fishing boats in Rockland, he somehow lands there after traveling extensively from Key West to Alaska looking for a suitable job on a commercial fishing boat. He has done all kinds of fishing- and dockside-related occupations by the time he meets up with the Raynes family of Owls Head, mainly Alton and Bernard, but also the rest of the family, dating all the way back to 1646.

Of course, it is the 1980s and the groundfishing industry is about to take a dive. “I wonder if some people are born to callings that no longer exist,” he asks early in the book. “Technology and economic systems may have outpaced evolution, leaving the celestial navigators and masters of the wind with no way to express their true talents.”

He’s right. Every generation outpaces many of its workers with social and technological transformations so profound that most people get left behind. While Molyneaux evolves into an author, the other fishermen whose stories form the crux of this book soldier on, hoping their innate goodness will get them through.

With the Raynes family, Molyneaux falls into a quiet eddy, trying to stay clear of the crashing surf created by inept government regulators and overzealous environmental groups. It’s a complex story, sometimes too complex with all the technical jargon about fishing regulations and working on fishing boats.

At the end of the book, the author seems to have switched to full-time writing while his fishermen-heroes persevere. The last suggestion we hear is that maybe the old fishing boat can be used as “a funeral boat,” as Capt. Raynes tries to navigate all the government hurdles and red tape that block fishermen today.

When I read books or articles like this, I think I’d better get down to the supermarket before someone beats me to the last piece of haddock. Molyneaux makes a lot more of it, observ

ing his fishermen friends closely: “Relying on the continuity of his family’s experience, Bernard had retained his own system, within but apart from the one aimed at destroying him. He built his boat, and the quality of his craftmanship spoke for itself. He fished his way, and survived the perfect storm of federal fisheries mismanagement and environmental destruction.”

I hope it is all true, because many fishing families did not survive this “perfect storm.”

Wayne Reilly can be reached at wreilly@bangordailynews.net.

By Julie Murchison Harris

Of the NEWS Staff

BORROWED BLACK: A LABRADOR FANTASY, written by Ellen Bryan Obed, illustrated by Jan Mogensen, first printing 1979, second printing 1988, reprinted 2005 by Breakwater Books, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, 32 pages, hardcover, $19.95.

What a fantastic tale that tickles the most unconventional parts of one’s imagination! “Borrowed Black” borrows elements from Labradorean folklore about the moon and the sea, and is told in the traditions of the British Brothers Grimm in “Grimms Fairy Tales” and the far-reaching fantasy of Greek mythology.

The main character, Borrowed Black, is a creature put together from various things he has borrowed; even his lifeblood – wind he keeps in a sack – is borrowed.

He borrowed boards from boats he had found –

Some that were floating, some that had drowned.

Then he built a shack for the wickedest weather

And caught two hundred creatures to hold it together.

Everyone leaves him alone until Borrowed Black takes it too far and plunges the world into total darkness by borrowing and shattering the moon and burying it at sea. This book has it all: villains and heroes, the supernatural and the earthbound, myths and reality. The scary tones are balanced by the fantasy of the story, thus making it quite appropriate for children of all ages.

Author Ellen Bryan Obed uses rhyme and rhythm to hook the reader into her dark tale, accented by Jan Mogensen’s wonderful illustrations that show enough detail to satisfy the curious and to stimulate imaginations. Mogensen’s choices of subdued colors and Obed’s tendency to push readers just beyond the normal conventions of folklore make this book deserving of reprint.

As with any surviving piece of folklore, this one teaches a lesson: never be greedy, especially if you are taking things that do not belong to you alone – a lesson none of us is too old to learn.

Julie Murchison Harris can be reached at 990-8285 and jharris@bangordailynews.net.

BY DANA WILDE

OF THE NEWS STAFF

PUCKERBRUSH REVIEW Vol. XXIII No. II, winter-spring 2005; edited by Constance Hunting; Puckerbrush Press, Orono; 134 pages, large format perfect bound, $6.

Constance Hunting’s Puckerbrush Review, now in its 23rd volume, is still Maine’s most reliable literary magazine.

The poems in this year’s winter-spring edition are typical Puckerbrush offerings, focused on the facts of the natural world, and not straying too far beyond. Baron Wormser, Maine’s poet laureate, contributes “For Leo,” a usual solid performance. Two representative Puckerbrush poems – “Lament: Beginning Winter” by one of Maine’s least hyped but most accomplished poets since the 1970s, David Walker, and “Lament” by David Gordon – are paired along with catchy comments traded by the poets.

The fiction in this issue is mainly workmanlike but unremarkable. If you want to know what it’s like to be a discouraged paper mill worker, read “#1369” by Rumford author Tom Fallon, who has been ruffling the feathers of Maine’s literati for decades.

The nonfiction centerpiece is an interview UMaine instructor and poet Terry Crouch conducted with Mitchell Goodman, the husband of Denise Levertov. Goodman’s remarks are interesting for their candor and anecdotes, but information about the occasion and date of the interview unhappily was omitted. Levertov spent a good deal of time in Maine and was among a score or two of universally respected postwar American poets; she died in 1997 but in the interview is spoken of as still being alive.

Editor Hunting also fields her essay “Poetry as Theft,” and a prize for some readers will be 11 lyrics from the papers of Welch Everman, Hunting’s UMaine colleague who died last year.

A review alerting us to Blackberry Books’ republication of Ruth Moore’s novel “The Fire Balloon” is way too long, there are some unavoidable duds among the poems, and the magazine’s tradition of minor but unfortunate proofreading errors is upheld in the mistitling of Moore’s book on the cover. But this issue of Puckerbrush Review remains a faithful forum for people interested in certain currents of Maine letters. And the truth is, it should be picked up for the coffee table, too, as it is just as pleasant – and more valuable – a way to spend the odd 20 minutes as watching Oprah.

Dana Wilde can be reached at dana.wilde@umit.maine.edu.