Waiting to Deliver: An Alaskan commercial fishing memoir

Waiting to Deliver tells the story of a young man’s journey into the world of commercial fishing on the waters of Cook Inlet, Alaska. Starting as a greenhorn, Patrick Dixon works as a deckhand for two seasons before buying his own boat and permit. Through a series of missteps and close calls inspired by ignorance, inexperience and bad luck, he stumbles through several early years surviving the dangers inherent in working on the water, nursing a chronically sinking boat and staying afloat financially to become a seasoned and successful fisherman. You bend over a red to show me how to use a fish pick/not realizing what is happening to me/ how you are stripping away the web of my past life/pulling me through to solid ground.

Dixon intersperses his stories with evocative poetry and classic black-and-white original photographs. As an accomplished photographer and sensitive poet, he fills Waiting to Deliver with unexpected sensitivity and an artist’s perspective.

Waiting to Deliver offers adventure, danger, humor and a love for working on the water in a vast and wild land. It describes a world, lifestyle and livelihood that is rapidly disappearing.