The Lord’s Oysters was nationally acclaimed when first published in 1957 by Atlantic/Little, Brown. While presented as a novel, it captures with vivid fidelity the life of the Chesapeake watermen and their families in the early 20th century.
“This is literally a wonderful book. The wonder is that of a boy, Noah Marlin, growing up along the Chester River near the Chesapeake Bay. Inevitably there is something of Twain and Tarkington in his pranks, hooky-playing, and fishing. But other qualities distinctly Gilbert Byron’s make the novel more than a nostalgic re-creation of an American childhood….This isn’t childhood we’re reading about, it’s life.”
—- Gerald Walker, Saturday Review