Summary of Kirk Wallace Johnson's The Fishermen and the Dragon

By IRB Media

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Book Preview:

#1 Billy Joe Aplin was a fisherman in 1975, and his family decked-out with all the trappings. He met his wife in 1964, when she was sixteen, and they were pregnant with their first child, Beth, in 1965. They had saved enough by the late 1960s to buy their first trawler.

#2 Billy Joe Aplin was a fisherman in 1975, and his family decked-out with all the trappings. He met his wife in 1964, when she was sixteen, and they were pregnant with their first child, Beth, in 1965. But one fateful morning in July 1969, his luck began to curdle. After dropping Beth off with a relative, Billy Joe and Judy went dragging for shrimp in high spirits but something quickly went wrong. The trawler began to sink, and they had to dive into the gulf to save themselves.

#3 In 1975, a fisherman named Billy Joe Aplin met his wife Judy in 1964, when she was sixteen and he was eighteen. They had three children together, and Billy Joe dreamed of the day when he could return to shrimping. But their luck began to curdle in 1969, when they sank their trawler and had to dive into the gulf to save themselves.

#4 Billy Joe Aplin was a fisherman in 1975, and his family decked-out with all the trappings. He met his wife in 1964, when she was sixteen, and they were pregnant with their first child, Beth, in 1965. But one fateful morning in 1969, their luck began to curdle. The trawler began to sink, and they had to dive into the gulf to save themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: IRB Media
• Release date: Sep 6, 2022
• ISBN: 9798350000412

IRB Media

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Insights on Kirk Wallace Johnson's The Fishermen and the Dragon

Contents

Insights from Chapter 1

Insights from Chapter 2

Insights from Chapter 3

Insights from Chapter 4

Insights from Chapter 5

Insights from Chapter 1

#1

In 1975, Billy Joe Aplin and his family were crabbers in San Antonio Bay. They’d met in 1964 when she was sixteen, a ninth-grade dropout picking crabs up the coast at a plant in Port Lavaca. They were pregnant a few months later. Billy Joe was in his senior year then, but he figured providing for his wife and daughter was more important than trigonometry.

Insights from Chapter 2

#1

Billy Joe’s luck began to curdle in 1969, when his boat was wrecked and his marriage fell apart. He seemed to attract misfortune. He soon indulged in an affair that nearly destroyed his marriage.

#2

The family had a few traps left to catch crabs, and as they were fishing, Billy Joe saw a strange crab with a bizarrely misshapen shell. He threw it overboard, and as he was driving back to town, he had a suspicion about what was behind it all.

#3

The town of Seadrift, Texas, was founded in 1848 by German settlers. It was a boomtown until June 28, 1919, when a massive hurricane swept through and rendered it a wasteland of timber and mangled steel. The town was rebuilt, and Diane’s family returned to work the bays.

#4

The author’s sister was a medic in Vietnam, and after reading a Life magazine article about helicopter medics in 1970, she enlisted. She was warned never to leave a needle behind because there were so many soldiers struggling with addiction to stronger substances.

#5

In the mid-1970s, Wilson knew that many shrimpers were supplementing their incomes by running drugs up from Mexico. Any shrimper who took a three-day trip to Mesquite Bay was suspect.

#6

Wilson began working at a crab-picking plant in Seadrift, a town on the northern fringe of Galveston.