Introduction, Prologue, and Part 1, The Greenhorn Season: Tanner Crab Fishing Aboard the Royal Quarry: Chapters 1-2 Summary and Analysis

Spike Walker once worked the oil fields of Louisiana and the lumber industry in Washington, Oregon, and Iowa. Spike heard about the easy money to be made in the Alaskan crab fishing industry and made his way to Kodiak Island where he learned to work in the world's most dangerous profession.

In the introduction, Spike tells the reader that most of what he has written are events he actually experienced during his time fishing in the Bering Sea during the king crab boom. In the prologue, Spike relates a story told to him upon his arrival on Kodiak Island in Alaska about the survivors of the Master Carl, a crab boat...