The Lord's Oysters

The Lord's Oysters was nationally acclaimed when first published in 1957 by Atlantic/Little, Brown. While presented as a novel, it captures with vivid fidelity the life of the Chesapeake Bay watermen and their families in the early 20th century."This is literally a wonderful book. The wonder is that of a boy, Noah Marlin, growing up along the Chester River near the Chesapeake Bay. Inevitably there is something of Twain and Tarkington in his pranks, hooky-playing, and fishing. But other qualities distinctly Gilbert Byron's make the novel more than a nostalgic re-creation of an American childhood….This isn't childhood we're reading about, it's life."--- Gerald Walker, Saturday Review"Crabs, perch, terrapin and frogs enter the episodes, but they are the only things fishy about this very happy sequence of a boy's growing."--- Phil Stong, The New York Times Book Review"It is unmistakably real. And it is unmistakably fine – as quiet, as understated and disarming as the time and the place and the people Mr. Byron is writing about. They ought to be mighty proud of him over on the Eastern Shore."--- Ellen Hart Smith, New York Herald Tribune