When the fishing vessel La Conte sinks suddenly at night in 100mph winds and record 90ft seas during a savage storm in January 1998, her five crewmen are left to drift without a life raft in the freezing Alaskan waters and survive as best they can.
150 miles away, in Sitka, Alaska, an H-60 Jayhawk helicopter lifts off from America's most remote Coast Guard base in the hopes of tracking down an anonymous Mayday signal. A fisherman's worst nightmare has become a Coast Guard crew's desperate mission. As the crew of the La Conte begin to die one by one, those sworn to watch over them risk everything to pull off the rescue of the century.
Spike Walker has been hailed by James A. Michener as “masterful.” In Coming Back Alive, Walker has crafted his most devastating book to date. Meticulously researched through hundreds of hours of taped interviews with the survivors, this is the true account of the La Conte's final voyage and the relationship between Alaskan fishermen and the search and rescue crews who risk their lives to save them.
“Coming Back Alive is everything the genre demands: exciting, harrowing, and maddeningly suspenseful.” —Portland Oregonian
“Reminiscent of Sebastian Junger's The Perfect Storm and Frederic Stonehouse's The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald. Highly recommended!” —Library Journal
“Junger intrigues you, Greenlaw enlightens you. Walker will scare you half to death...Walker describes seven of the most intense hours I have read about.” —National Fisherman's Journal