Scots author takes a leap with the launch of new novel
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The demise of Scotland’s inshore salmon netting industry, which had been a way of life in fishing communities for generations, has been brought to life in a new novel by author John Bennett.
The Summer Crew, which officially launched on Friday (June 12), follows the life of Sandy Geddes – a skipper on a River Spey salmon netting operation.
Faced with depleting salmon stocks, Sandy brings on a group of inexperienced recruits and the story tracks their journey as they struggle to learn the ropes.
Inspired by John Bennett’s own experiences working as on an ‘oar’ in a summer crew on the Spey salmon nets in the late 1980s, the novel takes a gentle, comic look at rural life in Scotland while also highlighting the real-life struggles faced by the industry when salmon stocks began to fall.
Publication of the book was originally scheduled for March but was held up after John, his wife Charlotte and their 11-year-old daughter Ella all contracted Covid-19.
The Summer Crew is the second novel from Moray-born John Bennett, who now lives in London after a successful career working as a partner in digital and innovation businesses.
Written partly in the Doric dialect of the north east of Scotland, was partly inspired by the novelist Compton Mackenzie and Neil Munro’s tales of Para Handy – a fictional Gaelic coastal skipper who appeared in a series of stories in The Glasgow Evening Times in the early 1900s.
Author John said: "I met some fantastic people and characters while I was a student, working part time on the salmon nets.
"The summer crews were a mix of permanent employees, students and part time workers hired to fish the summer grilse run for the months of June, July and August.
"Many of the fisheries stretched back over a thousand years but most of them were bought-out or closed in the space of about ten years around the turn of the Millennium, with the culture, tradition and skills of the salmon fishers disappearing almost overnight.
“The inshore boats were often blamed for the decline of the salmon, despite having fished sustainably in the same way for hundreds and in some cases thousands of years.
"At one point, up to 15,000 salmon would have been caught on the River Spey each year, but in 2018 the number had fallen as low as 3,000.
"Many believe that the main causes of the decline have been overfishing by giant factory ships in the newly discovered feeding grounds off Greenland and Iceland and, more recently, climate change.
"As the impacts of climate change continue to increase, farming communities are starting to face similar issues as those faced by the salmon fisheries 20 years ago.
"The demise of the onshore salmon fisheries asks much bigger questions about how we manage our natural resources, protect our communities and preserve our heritage and identity.
"It is, of course, vital that we conserve our wildlife, but how do we also protect our communities and their traditions?
"I hope the novel will entertain people but also shine a light on a forgotten way of life and underline the fragile nature of things, which is particularly relevant now with our current situation regarding the coronavirus outbreak.
"Having the virus was a very unpleasant and worrying time for me and my family.
"It does make you appreciate what you have and just how much we take our way of life for granted.”
The book, is available www.speybooks.co.uk, Waterstones and all good bookshops.
John’s first book Sea Otters Gambolling in the Wild, Wild Surf was published in 2006 by Random House and reached the Scottish top ten bestsellers list.
