Down at the Docks Hardcover - 2009

"An incisive portrait that takes both place and people seriously, and that does them honor." --Kirkus


“A passionately authentic fish story, as well a modern answer to Moby Dick, Nugent’s language rushes towards the reader filled with dockside lore, and like the Ancient Mariner, he holds the reader by his account: The chase is over, the bounty of the seas gutted and stripped to the bone. Down At The Docks has the attributes of a classic.”
—Rudolf Wurlitzer, author of Hard Travel to Sacred Places

There aren’t so many of those closed universes left in America, places where people share skill, custom, vocabulary, ethos, morality. Rory Nugent’s New Bedford is one of the holdouts, and it is described here with compassion and skill and humor. A classic American book.
—Bill McKibben, author of Deep Economy

“One of our most intrepid and intriguing traveling writers, Rory Nugent brings to life an incredibly exotic subculture right in our backyard : the New Bedford waterfront, capturing its pungent, Portuguese-inflected lingo for the first time, and immersing himself so completely in it that he ends up writing the book in the boozy voice of its denizens, and becomes, its appears, one of its memorable characters himself.”
—Alex Shoumatoff, author of Legends of the American Desert, contributing Editor, Vanity Fair

“Lively, fascinating, and challenging. Rory Nugent has found the last of New Bedford’s indomitable fishermen, and the past comes roaring back to life just in time to make us think more deeply about the future of the seas.”
—Tony Hiss, author of The Experience of Place

Rory Nugent is an explorer and a writer. His previous books are "The Search for the Pink-Headed Duck "and "Drums Along the Congo." An accomplished mariner, he has sailed single-handed across the Atlantic four and a half times, his last trip ending in shipwreck.