FATAL FORECAST

Three small lobster boats unknowingly head into a massive storm in Georges Bank, off Cape Cod, in this nautical survival story that is a young readers’ adaptation of Tougias’ 2007 adult work of the same name.

Thanks to governmental delay in replacing a defective weather-forecasting buoy, the crews of the Fair Wind, Sea Fever, and Sea Star set out in November 1980, unaware that they were heading straight into 87-knot winds and waves as tall as 10-story buildings. Highlighted by the nearly 50-hour ordeal of Ernie Hazard, the sole survivor of the Fair Wind, on a leaky, wave-tossed life raft, the ensuing events were certainly harrowing. But despite the removal of some (but not enough) repetitive and extraneous detail from the original edition, Tougias’ narrative remains a slog, alternating prolonged, similar-sounding passages featuring tough men struggling to endure pounding seas with flights of overwritten melodrama and insufficient efforts to individualize the people involved. Aside from a paragraph explaining the specially designed Givens raft, the author likewise neglects to provide specific descriptions of either the working boats or the vessels involved in the eventual rescue, details that would have helped readers better visualize events. While the material is promising, the presentation unfortunately fails to make the conditions seem real or the participants come alive for audiences.

Tragic but at once both sketchy and too long.