I purchased COME HELL ON HIGH WATER shortly after reading Greg Jaynes's first book, SKETCHES FROM A DIRT ROAD, which I enjoyed immensely. The second book sat on my shelf for several months before I got to it. I'm glad I did, because there's a lot of hard-won wisdom to be found in its pages. Jaynes might argue with me on that, because he seemed to be groping for something himself throughout this journal, trying to make sense of the round-the-world cruise on a British-owned, Russian-built and -crewed freighter, a former ice-breaker now plying the southern route.

The journal begins in September of 1995, but the journey doesn't actually begin until December, in Liverpool, and ends in Singapore nearly four months later. Along the way he gets to know his fellow passengers on the freighter - ten of them, most a generation or more older than Jaynes, who was 47 when he wrote CHoHW. They are a 'motley crew' (I just had to use the term) indeed, including a few elderly English travelers, the most colorful being a bitter, alcoholic woman, ragingly unresigned to her aging infirm body who Jaynes calls 'Toxic June.' He forms an alliance with this woman for a while, until even he can no longer tolerate her rancor and acid wit, which alienates nearly everyone on the ship, passengers, officers and crew. There are also several other Americans aboard, from Tennesse, Wyoming and upstate New York. Jaynes maintains friendly relations with the Captain and other officers, but is perhaps most friendly with an older Brit, 'Leicester of Devon,' a widower who is perhaps the most decent and sympathetic of all the ship's 'characters.'

Jaynes took along Tolstoy's WAR AND PEACE, determined to finally read what had heretofore been an 'unreadable' classic for him. It is one of the things he actually manages to accomplish on this odd 'ship of fools' voyage, complaining through much of the hundreds of pages about the difficulty of keeping all the characters with their various Russian names straight, a difficulty I shared years ago when I tried to read DOCTOR ZHIVAGO. I never did get far in the book, but enjoyed the film - thank goodness for movies, huh? One of Jaynes's early comments on reading the book: "I don't think War and Peace would be so thick if it weren't so full of people talking twaddle." I would like to say, 'Indeed' here, but alas, I've never even attempted to read WaP. ("You're a better man than I am, Gun-, er, Gregory Jaynes.") The sheer weight and bulk of the book has always frightened me away.

I was not sure I liked the Greg Jaynes of CHoHW as much as I had the one in his earlier book, all about reclaiming a rural southern farm and raising his small children there. Because he confessed here that he divorced his first wife about the time that first book was published, more than thirty years ago. And he also let it be known that although he was married again, he was tired of being married. The truth is though, his utter honesty about these and other things appealed to me, kept me reading. I wonder how many men go through this kind of doubt, a period of wondering what they might be missing 'somewhere out there' after several years or more of marriage and working - doing what's 'expected.' Greg Jaynes left his wife and jumped on a freighter at 47 to try to figure out these things. She had given a kind of approval, telling him to 'go if he must.'

I went through a similar life crisis at 32, leaving my wife and two small boys behind to reenlist in the army. Like Madeline Greenleaf Jaynes, my own wife went along with the craziness, and supported me, later following with the kids to California and Germany. We're still together, 35 years after that precipitous change in our lives, retired and doing that 'living happily ever after' thing.

Jaynes's behavior during his various ports of call were not always admirable, as they included a couple assignations with prostitutes. But in the end he apparently came clean about all this to his wife upon his return.

"When it came time to account, I told her what I had done. She said, 'Nothing lasting?' I said, 'I never knew their names.'"

He also confessed that his "interest in marriage has not come back. But I'm not going anywhere." His wife replied, "Then neither am I."

As an invested and interested reader, I can only hope things got better than that for them from then on.

Here's a minor point I can't resist inserting here. During a port call in Suva, Fiji Islands, Jaynes notes passing by a Methodist church hearing the people singing "The Old Rugged Cross." I live in Reed City, Michigan, the last residence of George Bennard, the composer of that venerable hymn. There is an Old Rugged Cross Museum here in town and its docents are currently gearing up to mark the 100th anniversary of the hymn, which has made its way many times around the world - a small world, after all.

There is much humor here, as in Jaynes's other book. I know I haven't done justice to that aspect of the book. I hope someone else will. I said there was wisdom here. Here's a sample: at the time of the birth of his first grandson, when Jaynes was literally on the other side of the world, he made this list/comment: "love, liberty, security - you're done for without all three." A bit later he remembered when his daughter won a beauty contest, in which she was asked "what she considered the most important element in any relationship." Her answer? "Trust." Jaynes added it to his list - advice to Andy, his first grandchild (who would be 15 this year).

My God, look at all I've written here! Probably I should have organized my thoughts a little better and condensed this, but what the hell. I liked this book. It made me think, and not just about Jaynes's life, but about my own. Life is peculiar, ain't it? Greg Jaynes is a few years younger than I, but we'd probably have some things to talk about over coffee. I hope he's found some measure of happiness, that he is enjoying his grandchildren. And I hope there will be another book. - Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir BOOKLOVER

I loved this book. I served my apprenticeship with Bank Line, and worked for them for thirteen years, in the 70's and 80's so some of the things he described struck a chord. It was somewhat different back then, because pretty much all the officers were British or Irish, and the officers' bar was its own little community. Even so, he has captured the dynamics of a group of disparate people forced into close companionship very well. The only worry is that he might put people off travelling by cargo ship, and it is a good way to go. You definitely need to be able to entertain yourself though.

I wondered why this book got published. Jaynes seems to have gone on a boring trip, and he doesn't have much too say. So he resorts to making fun of his elderly shipmates, and giving us his interpretations on War and Peace. I'm surprised that, as a reporter, Jaynes couldn't have suppressed his ego a little more and discovered more about the souls and characters that lied beneath the surface things that annoyed him -- Ernie's endless talking about Okinawa; Peter's cheapness and constant counting. His egocentrism becomes absurdly obvious by the end of the book. He talks about a crew member whose face is scarred from a horrible accident. Then, he writes something along the lines of, "Oh, did I forget to mention that?" Geez, maybe that guy's story might have been a little more interesting than the conversation with Toxic Jane when she tells Greg what an interesting, intelligent man he is. It's amazing how many times Jaynes has to tell us he's smarter than his shipmates. (It comes up again in the interview available here - he talks about having more IQ points.) Even when he's deriding himself, it's done in a vain way -- Oh, what a rogue I am. I've made it a policy this year to finish books I start, to give them a chance until the final page. Were it not for this pledge, I never could have gotten through this tedious, mean-spirited book. He hates fat people as well as the elderly. Witness his reaction to a crew member reporting another man on board had sex with one of the fat Russian stewardesses. Writes Jaynes: I imagine for a moment having sex with this woman. But I can't put it together. Science would be against such cross-pollination.

When I heard the author discuss this book on Late Night with Tom Snyder, I immediately jumped out of bed and ordered it from Amazon. I wish I hadn't. This was a journalist who sailed around the world on a cargo ship. Actually, it was a converted Russian ice-breaker. The journey is evidently one of introspection, and he shouldn't have bothered with the small amount of material he had to examine. He whines and complains and snivels until you wish he had fallen overboard. Too damn little about the ship and too damn much about himself. That Jaynes chose to read War and Peace on his journey was ironic. When I slugged through Tolstoy, my only goal for the last third of the tome was just to finish it and get it over with. I can say the same thing about the last third of Come Hell on High Water. There were some great moments, mostly when Jaynes discusses his career as a journalist. Some of those anecdotes were great. Jaynes should write that book.