Bycatch by Alexander Blevens – Review by Tara Johnson Barnes

Bycatch by Alexander Blevens
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rex is a man that has been running from the crimes he committed in Vietnam over twenty years ago. When his sons drown an immigrant fisherman that witnessed their crime after scuttling a shrimp boat, Rex feels remorse but keeps quiet. When the fisherman’s daughter discovers her late father’s wartime journal, she approaches Rex with secrets her father never told anyone. Now that his sons are being forced to face their crimes, Rex is also forced to face his past. Rex must decide if he should continue living his life of lies or beg for mercy from those that he hurt.

Bycatch is a haunting tale of one man who is forced to come face to face with his past and the harm it caused. With multiple timelines the reader can see into the past as the Vietnam war is taking place, while reading about the shrimping industry and the characters in present day Biloxi, Mississippi. When a theft is committed in Vietnam during the war, the parties involved go their separate ways and think that they will never see the other again. Until one fateful day when they run into each other decades later in Biloxi, Mississippi. Things start to unravel as one man dies and the other is forced to face the consequences of his past actions. A beautiful and haunting tale of war, greed, and the consequences of bad choices.

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