Have you ever dreamed of becoming a commercial deep sea fisherman? If your name is Jim Howard, and you have grown up on a farm is southwestern Colorado, everything about the Pacific ocean has plenty of mystique and allure. Author Kenneth Fenter has a way of reeling us into this adventure of a young man whose farm life is brought to an abrupt halt by the insolvency and forced sale of the family farm. It is a classic tale of "when one door closes in your face, look for the one that's open." Jim Howard has plenty of clues that commercial fishing on the Oregon coast is a vanishing career, but events conspire to hook him into a summer of passion for fishing and the sea. And at the age of 22, he isn't tongue tied in the presence of the ladies of Winchester Bay. This novel sports a lively and engaging cast of characters, including the flat landers who are drawn to the sea and those who have grown up on the foggy mossy seascape and long for nothing more than to escape it! The women in this novel are richly drawn with interesting back stories and Jim loves them all. And he has as much to learn about women as he does about boats and fishing. My guess is that you will be hooked and landed by Incessant Expectations just like a Chinook salmon on a day when they are hitting. Incessant Expectations focuses on the Commercial Salmon fishing industry off the Oregon coast as it was in the mid 1970s on the edge of the end of its heyday.
About the Author: Kenneth Fenter has written six novels: The Ruin, The Bee Tree, Pivotal Times, Gifted Hands: Saino no aru te, Coronado's Gold, and Incessant Expectations. During the summer of 1975, at Winchester Bay, Oregon the author spent days on his brother Mark Fenter's commercial fishing boat researching for this book. He filled notebooks observing his brother's methods, listening to him talk to the other fishermen on the CB during slack periods, accompanying him to the dock side café and tavern where Mark met and compared conditions and life with the other men. It was a chance to work as a journalist in an attempt to observe the atmosphere and conditions Mark and his cohorts worked under. He observed hard work under difficult and dangerous conditions. Mark's and the other men's hands suffered from handling the lines and they took risks every time they crossed the bar going out and coming in. The intent to use the information was to take a leave of absence from teaching at Springfield High School to write a novel about salmon fishing off the Oregon coast. And a rough draft came of it in the summer of 1976. As fate would have it, an opportunity to take the family to Japan to teach intervened and the project went on the shelf. Fortunately, Mark had gone over the rough draft and edited the technical details before it was shelved. Incessant Expectations became the sixth novel for Kenneth Fenter, instead of the first. Fenter also wrote three non-fiction books about Japan; Gaijin! Gaijin; MoIchi Do; and Stained Glass. He lives in Bend, Oregon with his wife Lora.