Body of Water
Nonfiction

Body of Water

A Sage, A Seeker, and the World's Most Alluring Fish
By
Chris Dombrowski
“Evocative, exacting” —WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Chris Dombrowski was playing a numbers game: two passions—poetry and fly-fishing; one child, with another on the way; 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 intuition 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.

ISBN
9781571313645
Publish Date
Pages
240
Dimensions
5.5 × 8.5 × 0.5 in
Weight
10.6 oz
Cover Art

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Author

Chris Dombrowski

Chris Dombrowski is the author of The River You Touch: Making a Life on Moving Water. He is also the author of Body of Water: A Sage, A Seeker, and the World’s Most Elusive Fish, and of three acclaimed collections of poems. Currently the Director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Montana, he lives with his family in Missoula.

Praise and Prizes

  • “A wonderful, restless memoir. … Wistful but muscular, Body of Water is a thrilling escape and a fascinating account of the evolution of the flats, the habits of bonefish and the story of how the saltwater side of the sport came to be.”

    The Wall Street Journal, “Five Best: Books on Angling”

  • “Chris Dombrowski’s writing exhibits a poetic sense of economy. There’s a tremendous amount of information here on the geological, botanical, biological and human history of the region, but the author uses only what’s necessary to the story and relates it in evocative, concise language that reminded me of Gary Snyder one minute and John McPhee the next… . 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

  • “Chris 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

  • “A brilliant book. Destined to be a classic.”

    Jim Harrison
    author of Legends of the Fall

  • “Body of Water pours forth beauties, subtleties, dark history, and insight with an unforced lyrical power I associate with no lesser word than ‘masterpiece.’ Dombrowski’s Michigan-to-Montana trajectory updates Jim Harrison, his comedic fishing scenes bear comparison to Thomas McGuane, and his powers of ebullient reflection bring to mind Mary Oliver—yet I’ve read no book anything like Body of Water, and enjoyed no book in memory more.”

    David James Duncan
    author of The River Why

  • “Part love letter to fishing, part natural history of the Bahamas, part conservationist manifesto, and part meditation on the self … . Dombrowski’s talent as a writer is on full display here, his tight and rhythmic prose reminding one of the gentle and relaxing lap of water against the hull of a fishing boat on a sunny and windless day.”

    Indie Next List (Winter 2017-2018)
    Selected by Lane Jacobson, Flyleaf Books

  • “This is some of the best writing that you’ll ever read about fishing. But Body of Water achieves even more—it’s a passionate, luminous, completely delightful book.”

    Ian Frazier
    author of Travels in Siberia

  • “A lyrical, genre-defying tribute. Drawing on Caribbean history and the evolution of fly-fishing, Chris Dombrowski’s foray into nonfiction proves thematically complex, finely wrought, and profoundly life-affirming.”

    Publishers Weekly
    (starred review)

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