In 1898 a 16-year-old immigrant with a sixth-grade education and not much more than the clothes on his back landed in Boston. By 1906, this immigrant, Michael Foley, had started a fresh fish company. In 2005, Michael Foley’s great-granddaughter, Laura, together with Peter, her co-owner husband, became the fourth generation to own and operate the Foley Fish Company, the seafood industry’s standard for quality, consistency, and integrity. Swimming Upstream is the story of four generations of Foley fishmongers, their successes and failures, their talents and foibles. Each generation has met the changing needs of the business in its own way, but in four generations, the goal set by the founder to provide customers only truly fresh, delicious, nutritious seafood has never been compromised. Swimming Upstream is more than the story of a family and a business. It is an immigrant’s story of Boston in the early 1900s. Michael Foley arrived when “No Irish need apply” signs were posted, but in spite of this his son Francis graduated from Harvard College. This is the story of the daunting challenges faced by the Foleys in producing a highly perishable product with highly variable pricing, and the many loyal and talented employees who enabled them to meet innumerable challenges through two World Wars, the Depression, resource depletion, and now the Covid pandemic. It is about competing with producers who added water-weight to lower prices, or substitute species to average down costs. It is the story of the vagaries of U.S. fisheries management and Foley Fish’s efforts to support the resource. It is also the story of Foley Fish’s attempt to educate the consumer, and even chefs, on how to care for and prepare fish, and to assure the public that truly fresh fish doesn’t smell fishy.

Randall Moss is known around Fort Walton, Florida, as a loud-mouth braggart and a spaced-out petty crook. As he prepares to carry out his dream job, Moss knows he cannot do it alone. He gathers an eclectic group of beer-loving thugs in his backyard to formulate a plan, thinking that nothing can go wrong. Unfortunately, Mosss instincts have never been spot on. Meanwhile, Thomas Reed is busy reflecting on his ability to convince his community that he is a respected businessman instead of a dirty crook without any idea that a gang of men who seem to be ninjas is quietly waiting in the shadows to ruin his day. Moments later, Moss and Reed meet in a hail of gunfire that leaves Reed and his wife dead. As the criminals speed away with their loot, they are clueless that a security camera has captured every moment. Now unwittingly entangled in a covert business run by the Mexican drug cartel and a suspect in a double murder, Moss realizes too late that he is officially in over his head. In this thrilling tale, more murders follow as a police consultant is drawn into a challenging investigation that leads him into a dangerous cat-and-mouse game with a group of determined drug dealers.

Picturesque T Wharf was long the home of Boston's fishing industry. Henry D. Fisher created a remarkable photographic record of the fishing fleet in Boston Harbor between 1908 and 1920, when Boston was America's largest fish market. This book's 117 photographs, accompanied by an equally vivid text, recreate the fishing vessels and markets of a vanished era. The North American Society for Oceanic History named Down on T Wharf the best book on American maritime history published in 1982.