When the fishing vessel La Conte sinks suddenly at night in one-hundred-mile-per-hour winds and record ninety-foot 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.

One hundred fifty 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's memoir of his years as a deckhand in Alaska, Working on the Edge, was hailed by James A. Michner as "masterful... will become the definitive account of this perilous trade, an addition to the literature of the sea." 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.

• We started tracking this book on February 2, 2012.
• This book was $9.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 19 times in the past 4,977 days.
• The current price of this book is $3.99 last checked 3 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past six months.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $2.99.
• The lowest price to date was $1.99 last reached on March 4, 2021.
• This book has been $1.99 one time since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $14.99 last reached on May 24, 2025.
• This book has been $14.99 one time since we started tracking it.

• HistoryAmericasUnited States20th Century
• HistoryAmericas
• HistoryUnited States20th Century

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 290 Pages
• File Size: 27 KB