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The Wooden Nickel
Lucky Lunt is an endangered species: a third generation lobsterman who works the same Maine waters as his father and grandfather in a boat called The Wooden Nickel. He can identify every car in town from the sound of its engine, but his world is changing faster then he can fathom. His wife has become an artist, selling sea-glass sculptures to tourists. His daughter is bound for college, while his son has turned angry and lawless. Lucky's own heart is failing him, too. An operation has kept it ticking, but he can't run the boat alone any more.
As the spring lobster season opens, the only deckhand Lucky can find to help load his traps is Ronette, the not-quite-divorced wife of the local lobster wholesaler. When the two make it out to the fishing grounds, someone else's buoys are bobbing in his ancestral waters. Before he knows it, Lucky is in a lobster war and has abandoned all the rules: family, health, finance, even the rules of the sea that have guided him throughout his life. As waves of trouble turn into a flood tide, Lucky's pride propels him into an epic confrontation with his enemies and a rogue whale -- a battle his unreliable heart may not survive.
The Wooden Nickel is a classic story of a man raging against a changing world, full of pathos and comedy. It is a remarkable novel by a writer with a powerful, distinct, and original voice.
As the spring lobster season opens, the only deckhand Lucky can find to help load his traps is Ronette, the not-quite-divorced wife of the local lobster wholesaler. When the two make it out to the fishing grounds, someone else's buoys are bobbing in his ancestral waters. Before he knows it, Lucky is in a lobster war and has abandoned all the rules: family, health, finance, even the rules of the sea that have guided him throughout his life. As waves of trouble turn into a flood tide, Lucky's pride propels him into an epic confrontation with his enemies and a rogue whale -- a battle his unreliable heart may not survive.
The Wooden Nickel is a classic story of a man raging against a changing world, full of pathos and comedy. It is a remarkable novel by a writer with a powerful, distinct, and original voice.
368 pages, Paperback
First published March 26, 2002
About the author
William Carpenter
159 books10 followersWilliam Carpenter is the author of three books of poetry, and two novels.
Born and raised in New England, he earned his B.A. from Dartmouth and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He began publishing poetry in 1976, and won the Associated Writing Program’s Contemporary Poetry Award in 1980. In 1985 he received the Samuel French Morse Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts grant.
Born and raised in New England, he earned his B.A. from Dartmouth and a Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota. He began publishing poetry in 1976, and won the Associated Writing Program’s Contemporary Poetry Award in 1980. In 1985 he received the Samuel French Morse Prize and a National Endowment for the Arts grant.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
April 17, 2011
I've now read this book three times--the only book I've read more frequently is To KIll A Mockingbird--and I loved it this time through just as much as the first time.
It's hard to say if Lucas "Lucky" Lunt is a caricature or not but despite his rapidly unraveling life and out-sized reactions (he shoots a seal and then a sea gull, just because), he's hard not to like. He's a multi-generation lobsterman, trying to hold onto a way of life that's slipping away. His wife is finding her own life, making sea glass abstract art. His son is gay and his own heart is giving out, leaving him with a mountain of medical bills and making it harder to earn a decent living. And at opportunity, Lucky makes the wrong choice, ultimately leading to his downfall.
For anyone who wants to understand mid-coast to downeast Maine, this is an excellent read.
It's hard to say if Lucas "Lucky" Lunt is a caricature or not but despite his rapidly unraveling life and out-sized reactions (he shoots a seal and then a sea gull, just because), he's hard not to like. He's a multi-generation lobsterman, trying to hold onto a way of life that's slipping away. His wife is finding her own life, making sea glass abstract art. His son is gay and his own heart is giving out, leaving him with a mountain of medical bills and making it harder to earn a decent living. And at opportunity, Lucky makes the wrong choice, ultimately leading to his downfall.
For anyone who wants to understand mid-coast to downeast Maine, this is an excellent read.
November 1, 2016
William Carpenter isn't the sort to load up his .30-30 of a Sunday and discharge his frustrations into a few helpless seals. There's no evidence he cheats on his wife or would beat a girlfriend. And in my presence anyway, he has never employed such epithets as "Krauts," "fairies," or "slant-eyes." In fact, the Maine writer admits he is practically 100 percent the opposite of Lucas "Lucky" Lunt, the hard-swearing, pill-popping lobsterman at the Havoline-fueled heart of The Wooden Nickel, Carpenter's second novel.
"To be human beings, we have to accept everyone," argues the anti-Lunt, a 61-year-old optimist with steely blue eyes and barbed-wire eyebrows. He leans forward in his rocking chair while paintings and sculpture loll about in the sunny, open front room of the former inn he shares with wife and their son. "In these days of political correctness, the middle class tend to reject much of humanity and draw a circle around their own experience," he says. "I hope, after reading this book, they will have expanded their circle of sympathy."
It's an intriguing and perhaps even admirable goal for a novel -- getting in touch, as Carpenter puts it, with his inner redneck. Inhabiting a "pirate consciousness," he pushes Lucky up against the limits of any civilized reader's patience and then, amid choppy seas and on the back of one disgruntled, all-too-mythic whale, attempts to redeem him.
But does it work?
Wouldn't it be a trick if it did. Even Maine's hardest-bitten class-warriors -- novelists like the gun-toting Carolyn Chute, Sandy Phippen down in rural Hancock, and Richard Russo, whose Camden address belies his more modest upbringing -- avoid straying too far from their own kind. And that was Carpenter's instinct, too. When he first sat down to write a novel of the Maine coast, this son of an art professor, who for 30 years has taught English at Bar Harbor's College of the Atlantic, created and cast aside a couple of different, educated protagonists. There was the college teacher dropout, fired after being charged with sexual harassment, who ends up working on the docks. "A hopeless cliché," Carpenter moans. Then there was the ex-lawyer and boatyard owner, a guy who witnesses a lobsterman shooting seals and predictably turns irate.
"I was stuck," Carpenter confesses. "I had a picture of someone like me, a middle-class person coming to Maine, sitting up there on his porch drinking gin and tonics. The problem is, I wanted to be down with the lobsterman shooting seals.
"So one day I was out sailing with a friend," Carpenter continues. "We were eating our al fresco breakfasts. I'm sure we looked like the privileged classes, two sailboats side by side, when suddenly this sizeable, heavy-displacement lobster boat took aim at us and came in way too close. He completely destroyed our breakfast. We were furious. It was so deliberate, so mean. I began to write a week later."
Out of that turbulent wake was born one Lucky Lunt.
"Every one of them things is some son of a bitch screwing the working man," Lucky grumbles early on in The Wooden Nickel, when he spies the likes of Carpenter out on the water.
"Then he slows down, edges a point to starboard so he can see behind the canvas dodger and there they are, five or six of them in the cockpit not doing a god damn thing, getting drunk while the money comes gushing down the mast from the satellite. Look at the bloodsuckers, three in the afternoon, swilling martinis like a bilge pump. Come suppertime they'll reach over and pull up some poor lobsterman's trap and steal a day's catch, living off the labor of others, worse parasites than a colony of fucking seals. 'Sons of a whore,' Lucky yells and heads right toward them, turning the throttle to 2200 rpm."
Read my full review/profile here: http://bit.ly/2ekCdcu
"To be human beings, we have to accept everyone," argues the anti-Lunt, a 61-year-old optimist with steely blue eyes and barbed-wire eyebrows. He leans forward in his rocking chair while paintings and sculpture loll about in the sunny, open front room of the former inn he shares with wife and their son. "In these days of political correctness, the middle class tend to reject much of humanity and draw a circle around their own experience," he says. "I hope, after reading this book, they will have expanded their circle of sympathy."
It's an intriguing and perhaps even admirable goal for a novel -- getting in touch, as Carpenter puts it, with his inner redneck. Inhabiting a "pirate consciousness," he pushes Lucky up against the limits of any civilized reader's patience and then, amid choppy seas and on the back of one disgruntled, all-too-mythic whale, attempts to redeem him.
But does it work?
Wouldn't it be a trick if it did. Even Maine's hardest-bitten class-warriors -- novelists like the gun-toting Carolyn Chute, Sandy Phippen down in rural Hancock, and Richard Russo, whose Camden address belies his more modest upbringing -- avoid straying too far from their own kind. And that was Carpenter's instinct, too. When he first sat down to write a novel of the Maine coast, this son of an art professor, who for 30 years has taught English at Bar Harbor's College of the Atlantic, created and cast aside a couple of different, educated protagonists. There was the college teacher dropout, fired after being charged with sexual harassment, who ends up working on the docks. "A hopeless cliché," Carpenter moans. Then there was the ex-lawyer and boatyard owner, a guy who witnesses a lobsterman shooting seals and predictably turns irate.
"I was stuck," Carpenter confesses. "I had a picture of someone like me, a middle-class person coming to Maine, sitting up there on his porch drinking gin and tonics. The problem is, I wanted to be down with the lobsterman shooting seals.
"So one day I was out sailing with a friend," Carpenter continues. "We were eating our al fresco breakfasts. I'm sure we looked like the privileged classes, two sailboats side by side, when suddenly this sizeable, heavy-displacement lobster boat took aim at us and came in way too close. He completely destroyed our breakfast. We were furious. It was so deliberate, so mean. I began to write a week later."
Out of that turbulent wake was born one Lucky Lunt.
"Every one of them things is some son of a bitch screwing the working man," Lucky grumbles early on in The Wooden Nickel, when he spies the likes of Carpenter out on the water.
"Then he slows down, edges a point to starboard so he can see behind the canvas dodger and there they are, five or six of them in the cockpit not doing a god damn thing, getting drunk while the money comes gushing down the mast from the satellite. Look at the bloodsuckers, three in the afternoon, swilling martinis like a bilge pump. Come suppertime they'll reach over and pull up some poor lobsterman's trap and steal a day's catch, living off the labor of others, worse parasites than a colony of fucking seals. 'Sons of a whore,' Lucky yells and heads right toward them, turning the throttle to 2200 rpm."
Read my full review/profile here: http://bit.ly/2ekCdcu
August 18, 2021
We picked up this novel secondhand from a bookstore in Rangeley, Maine (Books, Lines, and Thinkers) on the recommendation of the owner. It tells the story of lobsterman Lucky Lunt trying to hold on to a way of life and lobstering that is changing. Lucky doesn't grow as a character. He makes the same mistakes over and over and it's hard to look away. He's a bit of a caricature, but I loved his voice.
June 18, 2013
...what I thought was going to be a fun and somewhat cultural Downeast story, turned into a jumbled mess of crude narrative and a storyline that never truly developed. This could have been a good opportunity to tell the story of the trials and tribulations of a fisherman dealing with the "ways of the past" while wrestling with his own demons. The author tried to approach this story in a humor filled, salt and dirt encrusted narrative...and with the exception of the dirt fell awfully short.
June 9, 2013
I read a review of this book in Downeast Magazine and knew immediately that I wanted to read it. I was not disappointed. I thought that the characters were spot on, especially Lucky Lunt. He was the embodiment of all the worst and best of a Maine lobsterman. Many, many good laughs throughout. I highly recommend this book.
July 10, 2017
I read this because I was going to Maine. I wish I hadn't bothered.
November 18, 2019
one of my favorites
A+++++++
A+++++++
August 5, 2022
"A MORE ORNERY, LESS MORAL ARCHIE BUNKER"
Lucas “Lucky” Lunt is an uncouth profane sourpuss. I found nothing appealing about him except for his sarcastic boneheaded observations. He’s a hardcore conservative fisherman whose blood runs red, white, and blue, buddy. The self-destructive lobsterman rarely has anything good to say about anyone. Despite Lunt not graduating high school, he is known as a hardworking, topnotch lobsterman and a whiz with fixing machinery. He’s a 46-year-old, blue-collar worker who envies rich people and, despite major surgery after a heart attack, refuses to quit smoking, drinking, or ease back on his workload. Events take place when President Clinton was in office. Mr. Carpenter’s depiction of lobster communities is not flattering. Hell, incest, breaking the law, and drug use in the towns sound as common as mosquito bites. I am a lifelong Mainer but have no experience with working lobstermen or their supposedly insular communities. In comparison to the author’s Down East coastal working-waterfront scenarios, Mr. Carpenter makes me feel that the blue-collar papermaking town where I grew up was Eden.
‘The Wooden Nickel’ was a well-written caustic story. I laughed a lot at Lucky’s funny observations even though I wholeheartedly disagree with his perspectives. The biggest drawback about the story is I very much HATED Lucky Lunt and my hatred only worsened the further I read into the thing. Even the modicum of redemption Lunt conveys near the end of the story was nowhere near enough for me to root for the nasty SOB. By halfway through ‘The Wooden Nickel’ I just wanted the story to end. Lucky’s Ahab adventure was the most engrossing part of book. Mr. Carpenter’s novel addresses such topics as class resentment; the working waterfront; a small community’s ubiquitous gossip and farfetched rumors or history; small community rivalries; adjusting to changing times; lobster industry mores; and black-market fishing. Profanity in the novel is very prevalent. Lots of residents have spent time in the pokey or know someone who has, and graduating from high school is a touch-and-go possibility. Contrary to their public-relations efforts of being environmentally mindful, fishermen are shown in the novel to have no reservations in dumping old engines and other garbage into the ocean. The book was published in 2002 and reminded me of Carolyn Chute’s depressing novel ‘The Beans of Egypt, Maine.’ ‘The Wooden Nickel’ is the flip-side of Maine’s Vacationland marketing.
I sure hope Mr. Carpenter’s depiction of Maine lobster communities and its people was exaggerated because if it isn’t, we’re talkin’ about a sea’s worth of dysfunction in them thar neck of the woods. I did learn quite a bit of stuff about the hardworking lobster trade. There’s no way on God’s wet Earth would I have the discipline and enthusiasm to be a lobsterman. It doesn’t help I get sea sick in a bathtub and my stomach gets a wee-bit queasy seeing the live lobsters put into a steaming pot. I know, I know, I’ll turn in my man card on my way out. Sweet fancy peg leg, ‘The Wooden Nickel’ is a gloomy infuriating book.
Lucas “Lucky” Lunt is an uncouth profane sourpuss. I found nothing appealing about him except for his sarcastic boneheaded observations. He’s a hardcore conservative fisherman whose blood runs red, white, and blue, buddy. The self-destructive lobsterman rarely has anything good to say about anyone. Despite Lunt not graduating high school, he is known as a hardworking, topnotch lobsterman and a whiz with fixing machinery. He’s a 46-year-old, blue-collar worker who envies rich people and, despite major surgery after a heart attack, refuses to quit smoking, drinking, or ease back on his workload. Events take place when President Clinton was in office. Mr. Carpenter’s depiction of lobster communities is not flattering. Hell, incest, breaking the law, and drug use in the towns sound as common as mosquito bites. I am a lifelong Mainer but have no experience with working lobstermen or their supposedly insular communities. In comparison to the author’s Down East coastal working-waterfront scenarios, Mr. Carpenter makes me feel that the blue-collar papermaking town where I grew up was Eden.
‘The Wooden Nickel’ was a well-written caustic story. I laughed a lot at Lucky’s funny observations even though I wholeheartedly disagree with his perspectives. The biggest drawback about the story is I very much HATED Lucky Lunt and my hatred only worsened the further I read into the thing. Even the modicum of redemption Lunt conveys near the end of the story was nowhere near enough for me to root for the nasty SOB. By halfway through ‘The Wooden Nickel’ I just wanted the story to end. Lucky’s Ahab adventure was the most engrossing part of book. Mr. Carpenter’s novel addresses such topics as class resentment; the working waterfront; a small community’s ubiquitous gossip and farfetched rumors or history; small community rivalries; adjusting to changing times; lobster industry mores; and black-market fishing. Profanity in the novel is very prevalent. Lots of residents have spent time in the pokey or know someone who has, and graduating from high school is a touch-and-go possibility. Contrary to their public-relations efforts of being environmentally mindful, fishermen are shown in the novel to have no reservations in dumping old engines and other garbage into the ocean. The book was published in 2002 and reminded me of Carolyn Chute’s depressing novel ‘The Beans of Egypt, Maine.’ ‘The Wooden Nickel’ is the flip-side of Maine’s Vacationland marketing.
I sure hope Mr. Carpenter’s depiction of Maine lobster communities and its people was exaggerated because if it isn’t, we’re talkin’ about a sea’s worth of dysfunction in them thar neck of the woods. I did learn quite a bit of stuff about the hardworking lobster trade. There’s no way on God’s wet Earth would I have the discipline and enthusiasm to be a lobsterman. It doesn’t help I get sea sick in a bathtub and my stomach gets a wee-bit queasy seeing the live lobsters put into a steaming pot. I know, I know, I’ll turn in my man card on my way out. Sweet fancy peg leg, ‘The Wooden Nickel’ is a gloomy infuriating book.
February 9, 2024
Can I both admire and dispose central character Lucky? A man driven, mostly to make poor decisions.
I enjoyed the often humorous depictions of the Mainers whose blood runs far saltier, who for generations scratched a living out of the sea. A dying breed? Yup, probably a reason for that.
The writing was good enough for me to look for other books by William Carpenter.
I enjoyed the often humorous depictions of the Mainers whose blood runs far saltier, who for generations scratched a living out of the sea. A dying breed? Yup, probably a reason for that.
The writing was good enough for me to look for other books by William Carpenter.
December 10, 2025
Lucky Lunt, a Maine lobsterman, has a blue collar mentality; he might have been a MAGA supporter if such a thing had existed during his time. In this novel, he manages to alienate his wife and kids, attack poachers on his fishing territory, lose his lobstering license, and impregnate a young married waitress. His foul mouth makes for occasionally humorous reading if you don't mind that sort of language. Despite all that, the novel moves rather slowly on its way to a weak conclusion.
October 1, 2023
This book introduced a highly detailed insight into a lesser-explored demographic. It really stirred up conflicted feelings in me.
February 26, 2013
There is a scene in the second half where Lucky is alone at night in town when I realized that I had been caught in this book. Something about the style of the paragraphs had left me kind of never quite getting in the groove, and then suddenly I was in. The magical world of Maine as a regular gray place like everywhere else and the locations an the diverse crazy characters were all real. Real people that you could get to know without the actual trouble or danger of getting to know them. Darkness on the edge of town for sure and the age old questions about desperation and redemption. It's all there. No idea what a star rating is for this book. I could justify 5 or 1 star. Cool original characters
November 29, 2014
This book, a "realistic" view of the lobster community on the coast of Maine in fiction form leaves me undecided as to give it a 3 or 4 star. This was the last book from a course on Hidden New England and probably the most provocative as to challenging my view of the often scenic coast and it's inhabitants. The author has painted a scene filled with profanity and harsh local color. So how much of it is real or bordering on caricature is left to be discerned by the reader. I'm glad that I finished it and was left with a feeling of hopefulness or not. One of those endings that the reader decides what happens, apt for these cast of characters who are caught in a changing world. Bravo to Carpenter for raising these issues and portraying them in a carefully crafted novel.
July 24, 2007
This novel kept me up nights until I finished it, always a sign of a really good book as far as I'm concerned. While the characters are not always very likeable, they are vividly rendered and draw you into their world.
July 3, 2015
I picked this up at the Dorr Museum on Mount Desert Island while vacationing in Maine. In the beginning I quite enjoyed it, however the language is so crude that I felt as though I was being assaulted.
January 5, 2016
Truly unlikable characters who make their own shitty life decisions that make their lives shittier and shittier, particularly the main character Maine lobsterman Lucky Lunt. Still had some entertainment value.
December 16, 2008
I hated every single character in this novel. Including the whale. But I guess that's a testament to how well they were drawn.
November 25, 2012
Not normally my kind of book but I figured I'd read the autographed copy I was given for Christmas since both of my grandfathers were lobstermen.
It was a quick read and I found I enjoyed it.
It was a quick read and I found I enjoyed it.
November 29, 2014
THIS IS AN ABSOLUTE MUST READ AND IF YOU CAN'T FIND A COPY YOU CAN BORROW MINE
June 15, 2015
This book really is a satire. It has many twists and turns and then just ends. An interesting perspective of a Maine lobsterman' trials and tribulations.
December 10, 2015
Lots of great quotes. Reminds me of fishermen I knew and some I still know.
April 27, 2016
I can't understand why this book was published.
Read
July 23, 2018What a doozy of an ending!
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews