Short Synopsis
Chris Dombrowski was playing a numbers game: two passions—poetry and fly-fishing; two children, one of them in utero; and an income hovering perilously close to zero. Enter, at this particularly challenging moment, a miraculous email: can’t go, it’s all paid for, just book a flight to Miami.

Full Synopsis
Chris Dombrowski was playing a numbers game: two passions—poetry and fly-fishing; two children, one of them in utero; and an income hovering perilously close to zero. Enter, at this particularly challenging moment, a miraculous email: can’t go, it’s all paid for, just book a flight to Miami.

Thus began a journey that would lead to the Bahamas and to David Pinder, a legendary bonefishing guide. Bonefish are prized for their elusiveness and their tenacity. And no one was better at hunting them than Pinder, a Bahamian whose accuracy and patience were virtuosic. He knows what the fish think, said one fisherman, before they think it.

By the time Dombrowski meets Pinder, however, he has been abandoned by the industry he helped build. With cataracts from a lifetime of staring at the water and a tiny severance package after forty years of service, he watches as the world of his beloved bonefish is degraded by tourists he himself did so much to attract. But as Pinder’s stories unfold, Dombrowski discovers a profound integrity and wisdom in the guide’s life.

"Dombrowski’s foray into nonfiction proves as thematically complex, finely wrought, and profoundly life-affirming as his poetry." ---Publishers Weekly Starred Review

"Dombrowski’s exacting descriptions of the sport make me long to try it again—and to wish that more fishing books were written by poets.” ---Wall Street Journal

"Fly-fishing mysticism at its best.” ---Shelf Awareness

"The lyrical narrative strikes a delicate balance between reflective memoir and reportage.” ---Minneapolis Star Tribune

“Dombrowski elevates the fly-fishing-as-meditation narrative by the sheer fact that he’s so damn good at writing about it. There’s prose and practicality in equal parts, so the allure of the sport comes through.” ---Outside

Publishers Weekly Review