>> Good evening, everyone. Welcome to the Library of Congress. I'm John Coal. I am the director of the center for the book in the Library of Congress which was created in 1977 to stimulate public interest in books and reading. And one of the ways that we loved to do it is through talk such as presentations such as the one that you will hear tonight. The center for the book is a unique group. It's a small catalytic organization with just four employees. But the Library of Congress supports those employees. And we look to the private sector for support for our programming which helps us promote books, reading, libraries, and literacy around the country and indeed around the world. Actually there are two important networks that help us do this and both are represented tonight. The first is a network that includes all 50 centers for the book, including an Alaska center for the book. And there is a small display about the Alaska center for the book that I hope you'll take a look at some of its products during the reception. Secondly, there's a group of reading promotion partners, national organizations that have a special interest in promoting books and reading. They include government agencies but they also include private organizations and the mid Atlantic chapter of the mystery writers of America, not surprisingly, one of our leading promotion partners is a cosponsor here tonight as well. I want to say a quick word about the Alaska center for the book which was created in 1991 with its take on our purpose. And this is how they describe what they do. They're a nonprofit all volunteer organization that celebrates the richness and diversity of language. Its goal is to stimulate public interest in literacy through the spoken word as central to our understanding of ourselves. We have a couple of special guests here tonight. Several special guests. You're all special guest, actually. I guess I better get to that fast. But two of them include Dr. James Billington who is the Librarian of Congress. Dr. Billington was named Librarian of Congress in 1987 by President Ronald Reagan and he is only the 13th Librarian of Congress since we began in 1800. Dr. Billington will you just stand and take a bow so people know you're really here. The second special guest among special guests is Katherine Ann Stevens, the wife of Senator Ted Stevens, who is here, she is a lawyer in Washington but she's also an advocate of the arts, an advocate of medical research, a friend of the Alaska center for the book, and also a friend -- she and Dana Stabenow are good friends and it was most appropriate that she was able to join us tonight. She asked me to say that the senator is in Alaska. That he will be here in time for all of his official duties. Mrs. Stevens, glad to have you here. [ Applause ] >> Finally, as you know, we're here to hear Dana speak about this wonderful new book which you're going to hear about in a minute. But I have to give you a clue about the book. This is her new book. It's called The Blindfold Game. And in researching it she's the one who's going to tell you about the book but in researching it she spent 16 days patrolling the Pacific Ocean on board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Alex Haley. She also reported, as you mystery fans will know, daily about life aboard ship on her interactive web site. We have a special guest from the Coast Guard who is going to say a word or two. He's Captain Jim Howe who is from U.S. Coast Guard Headquarters. And I have would like to introduce Captain Howe. [ Applause ] >> We, thank you very much to the Library of Congress, Mrs. Stevens. It's a pleasure to be here tonight. You know the Coast Guard is a sea going maritime service. And we have a fairly challenging job but it's no more challenging any where than off the coast of Alaska. About 40 percent of our fisheries in the entire U.S. are off the coast of Alaska. And of course as you know the weather up there is usually terrible in summer and worst in the winter. So it keeps us very busy. We call it job security. And as we know the fishermen and fisherwomen of Alaska they feed not only the nation but the world. So it's very important that we're there for them when they get in trouble or when mother nature turns a blind eye and causes havoc. So to hear that a mystery writer would volunteer to go out to sea on a Coast Guard ship for a day or two is really remarkable. And then to hear for 16 days that's really the mystery here I think. But we just wanted to -- just to thank you. We try not to toot our own horn to much but now we end up in this beautiful book and hopefully don't do to many silly things. But from all the men and women of the Coast Guard it's really an honor for you to have taken the time to include us in your venture here. We have a few things for you that I would just like to present real quickly. First as you know you can't survive on a ship without caffeine in the form of coffee, so we've got you the honorary coffee mug. >> Thank you. I'll tell you something about this. >> We also have a qualification you can earn in the Coast Guard. It's called being a cutterman. It's takes six months of sea service, but we understand she spent a lot of time working on this ship. We want to make her an honorary cutterman so we've got her a cuttermans pin that she can now wear. You are one of the pinned. [ Applause ] >> You don't know what this means. >> The other thing is we understand that Dana has to -- has to get back to Alaska pretty shortly here and can't spend much time in town but next time you're in town we're hoping that you can join the Commandant and the Officer Corps and the Flag Mess at Coast Guard head quarters if you're so inclined. We'll maybe buy you lunch and you can display your pin. >> I am at the Coast Guard's service. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. I don't know to say but thank you. >> I got her to blush that was the intent here. Just a final word is the Coast Guard we don't really look at ourself -- we're a fairly small service. There's only 40,000 active duty. We've got reserve, auxiliary, civilian. We don't look at ourselves really as units or even really as a team. We look at ourselves as a family. And Dana welcome to the family. Thank you very much. [ Applause ] >> Thank you, Captain Howe. This was a -- it's interesting tonight, we have different segments of the community that are interested in mysteries and we have finally brought the military into this as well. So we thank you. And we thank you for the companions that you brought to the talk. I'm not sure whether they were ordered to come to the talk. But I'm sure that they share that pride in the Coast Guard that you just talked about and we're glad to have all of you here. Dana is the author actually of 20 novels. And she -- I've learned a little bit about her. We were privileged to have her come to the national book festival, which the Library of Congress has sponsored with Laura Bush since 2001. And it's a wonderful festival on the mall. And one of the important pavilions is mysteries and thrillers. And Dana came in 19 -- excuse me, in 19 -- in 2004 where she was one of our stars in mysteries and thrillers. So we have had her at the Library of Congress before. And it was a great privilege and we did a little bit of research about her and we're surprised to learn that actually at that time the novel that she was honored for the previous year in 1993 and the novel that won the prestigious Edgar award presented by our partner, the mystery writers of America, was the 14th in a series of Kate Shugak -- do I have that -- Shugak novels, mysteries. And that was the one that was presented and that she talked about that night. It was called a Taint in the Blood and I'll bet there are people out here who have read that. Overall Dana Stabenow is the author of 20 novels. She's also an acclaimed travel writer for Alaska magazine. She's a graduate from the University of Alaska MFA, master of fine arts program. She is an Alaska native. She was raised on a 75 foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. Captain Howe, that's how that fish blood -- that water blood has gotten into her. And she currently does reside in Anchorage. As I said she was featured at the national book festival in 2004 and we're hoping to get her back. She sold her first mystery in 1990 and here we are celebrating the publication of her 20th. You know about the Coast Guard connection for the book. Now, it's my pleasure to recognize and to introduce Dana Stabenow, Dana. [ Applause ] >> Well, now I'm all shook up. I'm going to stutter and stumble a little bit for sure now. The cuttermans pin -- if I have this correctly, the cuttermans pin is earned after, I think it is, seven consecutive years at sea. It's five? Five consecutive years at sea. So you have to, you know, you have to be really salty as the Coast Guard says. Before you get one of these. This is an enormous honor and I am deeply grateful. Thank you. It made me cry. I wanted to begin today by some remarks that I have about how I came to write this novel because it's a thriller. And ordinarily I am very comfortably ensconced in series fiction. I have two different series that I write. And my agent has been after me for some time to write a thriller but I refused to do it until I had a half way decent plot. And I always knew that I was going to write about the Coast Guard. I just didn't know what I was going hang -- how I was going to hang this story together. I had to find the right villain. I had to find the right plot. So I'll tell you a little bit about that and then I'm going to tell you a little bit about my time on the Alex Haley. And then I'd be happy to take questions if you have any. The answer is pretty simple as to how I came to write this thriller. I've always wanted to write about the Coast Guard. I grew up in a fishing village called Seldovia. And the Coast Guard is a content presence in Alaska's life. They're 911 for 35 thousand miles of coastline. For thousands of Alaska fishermen and indeed for hundreds of tiny coastal communities to small for their own emergency services. They are also the first American service to promote women to command at sea. And on an armed ship at that. So I had my hero going in. The villain took a little longer. But when North Korea launched a surface to air missile that plunked down in the North Pacific Ocean a little to close for comfort I took notice. Everyone in Alaska did. I was determined not to write my thriller until I had the right plot. Something reasonably fresh and original. Then I read an article in Atlantic Monthly by William Langawish [phonetic] called An Anarchy at Sea. Which he went on then to include most of it in a book called the Outlaw Sea. I recommend it to anyone who he is interested in this topic. I won't tell you what it said. You can figure it out for yourself from the book. But I finally had my plot. Writing is a very solitary occupation. We writers spend most of our time locked up in a room with a computer, a shelf of reference books, and a Google shortcut on our desktop. But once in a while in the virtuous pursuit of original source material we get to do something really, really cool. It turns out that the Coast Guard has an extensive on-line presence, including the home page of the 283 foot medium endurance cutter, Alex Haley. Based in Kodiak. With that name it seemed as if destiny had stepped in. So I e-mailed Commander Craig Barcley Lloyd, captain of the Alex Haley and told him what I was doing. He wrote back and said come on down. For a day and a half in August 2003 Captain Lloyd answered five hours worth of questions, ran my fanny off over his ship, and it's a long ship, and sent me to fish school and a morning briefing for HERK pilots who patrol the maritime boundary line. And then when I got home to Anchorage I had an e-mail waiting in my inbox inviting me to join them on patrol the following February Okay. First thing everybody asks was I sea sick? Yes. Once. The first full day at sea. I woke up, sat up, and through up. Pretty much in that order. And this is in spite of the Dramamine I had taken the night before. My bunkey FSO Alice Jammison doctored me with saltine crackers and ginger ale and two others later I was fine. And I was fine after that from then on. Later that same day I walked into the wardroom pantry and the seaman on duty was so white you could count his individual freckles. Are you okay, I said. Sea sick, ma'am, he kind of groaned and then he staggered over to kneel in front of the trash can, puked, got up, blew his nose, washed his hands and went back to work. I think that young seaman shamed me out of being sea sick ever again. All the veteran crew members have stories about being sea sick. Captain Lloyd has never been sea sick. But he's not smug about it because that doesn't mean he never will be. As executive officer Phil Thorn told me there's a sea out there with everyone's name on it. But it's not only the sea sickness that is such a challenge. The constant motion of the ship doubles the difficulty of even the simplest task. On shore we're used to doing somethings with two hands. On board it's always one hand for the ship and one hand for whatever you're doing. I'm not walking when I'm getting around the Alex Haley I'm doing the polka with crewmen, bulkheads, hatches, tables, ladders, deck rails, and trash nets. You should have seen the bruises. I don't know how many times I banged my head on the stairways before I learned to duck when I was going up and down. If you're eating and the ship is rolling you're using a fork in one hand and with the other catching water glasses, bottles of salad dressing, plates, cutlery, pitchers, and serving dishes before they hit your lap -- or not. You have to plan out your showers. One handful of stuff at a time. Separate sets of gear for each trip. Toiletries in the try over the sink. Shampoo and towels in the shower. Clothes ready for when you get out. And then you have forgotten your flip-flops again and then you have to go put your jammies back on and go get them. I'm not even going to get into the art of washing and shampooing one handed while trying to keep under the water in a shower stall that refuses to remain up right. Sleeping too is problematic. The ship rocks and rolls and corkscrews and creeks and moans and shutters and shakes. Between the motion and the noise you cat nap if you're lucky. But who can sleep when you have to hang on to the side of the bunk to keep from being thrown to the deck. And here's a lesson for the day -- how to go to the bathroom in 15 foot seas and 30 knot winds. Wait for the tilt of the deck to be in your favor, stagger across the floor and slam into the head door. Open the door and trip over the raised door sill into the bathroom. Being careful to let the door clip your elbow as it swings back with the shift of the swell and the resulting tilt of the deck. Grab the handle bolted to the wall. Straddle the toilet and do you business while riding the seat like a mechanical bull in Urban Cowboy. Don't -- repeat -- do not flush while still seated. It took a day or so for me to get acclimated to the ship and for the ship to get acclimated to me. The crew did wonder what I was doing there. The first night at dinner Captain Lloyd said, what do you want to accomplish while you are on board? My job is to show up and pay attention, I said. And then what, he said. Something will happen, I said. What? I don't know, I said, but something will. Well, I'm here to tell you that lots of somethings happened in the 16 days that I was on the Alex Haley. What follows is just a taste. Here's a routine Alex Haley day. We're off the west coast of the Aleutian Peninsula, a place called slime banks, and it's partly cloudy and the wind has picked up. I go up to the bridge at dawn and we are literally surrounded by the lights of fishing vessels. Operations Officer Scott Littlefield is calling one vessel after another identifying boarding opportunities. He finds two. Both roughly 165 footers fishing Pacific cod. By nine a.m. we've got the starboard small boat in the water and we are loading our first boarding team. Also known as team alpha. They board the first fishing vessel and there was some very nice boat handling going on that was a joy to witness. And come back to pick up team bravo and take them to the second fishing vessel. An A-tom or aid to navigation report comes in about a broken navigation light on the coast about 160 miles away. They want us to see what's wrong with it and if we can fix it. And if not to find out what it will take to get it fixed. Our aviators are good to go but Captain Lloyd is more cautious. What if a SAR comes in. In the end in the Coast Guard spirit of we can do it, the motto of the U.S. Coast Guard is semper paratus, always ready. He gives the go, we retract the hanger, roll out the helo and unfold the rotors. In the mean time team alpha calls in and says they're go for pick up, so we sent our small boat over to pick them up. And while we're doing that team bravo calls in for pick up. The small boat brings back team alpha and goes and gets team bravo. We hoist the small boat back on board and pretty much the instant it hits the cradle we launch -- we bring the -- com brings the ship on to a flight course and we launch the helo. As not one but both skippers of the boarded vessels call the ship to complement us on the professionalism of our boarding teams. Really, I was standing there when they did that. And at least I think it was probably half a dozen ships captains called -- said when they signed off after talking to us on the radio it was good to know that we were out there. I thought that was a huge complement. This all happened before lunch. After lunch we brought the helo back on board with Chief Petty Officer Curtus Maryfield who went to try to fix the navigation light. When they get there, he tells us, they discover the light is 100 feet in the air with no landing site next to it. The helo hovers next to the light and Chief Maryfield steps from the helo to the light and reaches his safety line from the helo, hitches it to the light, and unpacks his tools and goes to work. How did you get back on the helo, the captain asked. I dove said captain -- said Chief Maryfield. The aviators took pictures. When I saw them I said, no wonder some of you are buried out here. Here is a routine Alex Haley night. We're north of the Pribilof islands. It's about 11:30. Most of the ship has turned in for the night. I'm brushing my teeth and Engineer Officer Tony Erickson knocks on the door to tell me we've got an SAR case. I shoot up to the bridge. It's jammed with the usual suspects reflected in the glow of all the electronic screens. All four engines are all ahead full. It feels like we're riding a juggernaut. A fisherman on a long liner about 25 miles away got a fish hook through his eye. His skipper is on the VHF with a OPs officer. He sounds tense but in control. He says I'm not set up for a hoist by helo. He's got two masts and a guide wire running by bow to mast to mast to stern down the centerline of his ship. The winds are calm and the seas are no more than three feet. It's full dark. No moon yet. Orion looming large on our starboard bow. By now everyone who is always there during an incident is present. The Captain, the XO, OPs, Chief Petty Officer Ross, Petty Officer Brown, BM3 Elwell, and BM2 Curly. HS1 Doc Bruhard, the ships corpsman, stands by for medical assessment and recommendations. The aviators are piped to the bridge. Lieutenant Chris Noland is the helo communications officer what you would call the tower if you were on shore. Lieutenant Vince Jenson is the landing signals officer or air traffic control down on the hanger deck. Everyone gathers around the captain. The long liners skipper repeats that he is not set up for a hoist by helo. He is clearly apprehensive at the prospect. First option discussed is to lower a boat. Drive over to the long liner with dock and an EMT on board. Lower the injured man into the boat, bring him back to the Alex Haley, stabilize him and helo him to the clinic on Saint Paul. Our aviators, Lieutenant Leery and Lieutenant Eason ask how long the long liner is. The answer is 170 feet. They are confident that in 170 feet they can hoist from somewhere, guide wire or no. The XO, playing devils advocate, points out that if they get there and they can't hoist it will take that much longer for us to lower a boat and bring the injured man on board. Meanwhile OPs is getting the name and age of the injured man from the long liners skipper to forward to the Saint Paul clinic. Calling the long liners agent in Dutch Harbor to apprise her of the situation. And calling Anchorage to arrange a Lifeflight from Anchorage to the clinic on Saint Paul. The long liner skipper says it's a three inch J hook with the bail still attached. The shank is bent and he doesn't know where the hook and the barb are. He's padded it with gauze and tape. And he doesn't want to mess with it any further. Nearly everyone on the bridge from the captain on down yells, don't touch it. Or thinks it loudly. Everyone has wade in the pros and the cons. We've got all the information we're going to get. The captain calls it. We'll go for helo launch with night vision goggles. The aviators head for the hanger deck. The XO takes the con. PO Brown calls out range and baring. The hanger is retracted. The helo rolled out. And the rotors unfolded. After which we dim all the lights as even a pin light could cause the night vision goggles to white out. We launch and the helo lifts off to port and roars past our bow almost invisible against the night sky. The Alex Haley continues running full ahead for the long liner in case they aren't able to hoist and we have to launch a boat after all. We monitor communications between the helo and the long liner. The helo has the long liner douse some of their lights. And requests that the injured man be brought to the port side of the long liners stern and get him into the basket when they drop it. I'm staring through the bridge windows trying -- straining to see in the dark. And I see a tiny light move off a larger light on our starboard bow. They're off. Someone says. No one cheers out loud but there is a huge exaltation of breath all of over the bridge. There was relief and gratitude in the long liners skippers voice when he thanks us for our assistance. I didn't know you could do that, he said. In all, it took about 90 minutes from the time the call came in to the time we heloed the injured man off the long liner. To my admittedly uneducated eye it was a textbook operation from start to finish. At this time these guys have been at sea ten days. A third of them are new to the ship. Some of them are fresh out of boot camp. Some of them have never been on a boat before in their lives. I've never seen my tax dollars better spent. I was on board the Alex Haley from February 4 to February 19, 2004, and I know I sound like a recruiting poster when I talk about it. All I can tell you is this is what I saw and that if I were 18 again this is where I would want to be. I get to work with a bunch of smart capable people. I get to play with large powerful toys. I'd literally get to see the world from Alaska to Antarctica and all points in between. And best of all I'd be helping people and saving lives. Joining up might not even interfere with me writing books. Look at the same on the cutter I was on. About Alex Haley. Our ships namesake. Before he wrote Roots he was a Chief Petty Officer in the U.S. Coast Guard for 20 years. There are photographs of him in the crews mess. And in the chiefs mess there's a large wooden hat rack presented to the United States Coast Guard cutter Alex Haley by the Baltimore chiefs in 1999. On it there are brass hooks for the chiefs hats. Including one hook labeled for Alex Haley. Which is never used. The Alex Haley motto is the saying of the man himself. Find the good and praise it. I'm informed that Chief Haley's other saying is we're screwed again. But I am entreated not to have heard this -- to late. When Captain Lloyd wrote to tell me that I could go on patrol with the Alex Haley I wrote back and told him that I was trying not to gush but that I was very excited. He wrote back four words. You will be amazed. One morning on the bridge I heard a young Lee helmsman standing watch at the throttles which controls the Alex Haleys 6800 horsepower say, You're right, kid. It is. One last thing. I ran the plot for Blindfold Game by Captain Lloyd the first time I met him quaking in my shoes because I thought for sure he was going to laugh me off of his ship. Instead he gave it some serious thought. His eyes fixed on a point somewhere beyond my left shoulder. After a long and for me agonizing moment he looked back at me and said very soberly, you know, Dana that's not all that farfetched. Thank you. [ Applause ]