Great-Grandma married a waterman at the turn of the century, when the Chesapeake Bay was bustling with boats and brimming with oysters as big as a man's hand.

Grandma married a waterman in the awful winter of 1934. All through the Great Depression, and later when the war came, times were hard. Mama married a waterman in the 1960s, when the oyster catch was getting smaller and smaller, and fishermen's nets brought up only cans and bottles, and everyone wondered if oystering was coming to an end.

Told through the eyes of Mamas daughter, Waterman's Child is the unforgettable saga of a Chesapeake family who, through good times and bad, never abandoned life on the water and never lost sight of what was most important: one another.

From the dust jacket