What Water Holds Review

Alaska-born author and commercial fisherman Tele Aadsen’s debut book, What Water Holds (Empty Bowl 2023), is a beautiful memoir-in-essays born of her relationship with the ocean. The sea is both workplace and habitat to Aadsen and her partner, Joel. She describes herself as “polyamorous with place,” and is equally at home on either end of their annual migration, transiting aboard the F/V Nerka those waters between the Coast Salish territory of Washington’s Skagit Valley by way of Bellingham and Lingít Aaní’s outer coast near Sitka.

The namesake essay was first shared at Writers Read in Sitka, and most of the essays were written for Oregon’s FisherPoets Gathering. That broader community of fisherfolk and the living waters they ply resonate through pages both lyrical and wise, experienced yet humble. Place and vocation inform questions about work and home, gender and power, science and climate change, economy and environment, family and community. The trim book can be read cover to cover or piece by piece. It’s a powerful read that will deepen most any reader’s appreciation and understanding of both salmon and the lifeways of small boat operators who harvest them.

—Jeremy Pataky, Edible Alaska co-editor

This micro-review ran with an excerpt from What Water Holds by Tele Aadsen in Issue No. 33, Fall 2024.