Hauling lobster traps in the sheltered waters of Maine's Penobscot Bay with her father as sternman is a day in the sun compared with the isolation and dangers offshore. Greenlaw was at sea, a captain in the swordfish fleet, during the ''perfect storm,'' and was among the last people to have radio contact with the doomed Andrea Gail. She wrote an earlier book about the difficult swordfishing life.
But island life has its charms - and its conflicts - and Greenlaw writes as enthusiastically about them as she did about her offshore experiences in the well-received ''The Hungry Ocean.'' The real, and very pleasant, surprise of ''The Lobster Chronicles'' is how well Greenlaw captures the small-town, waterside dramas of the Lighthouse Committee and the Island Lobster Association.