More than most sports, fly-fishing seems to turn its practitioners into reverent acolytes. Poet and Montana fishing guide Chris Dombrowski (Earth Again) was inspired to write by Norman Maclean's elegiac A River Runs Through It. Dombrowski's Body of Water is an poetic paean to the art of stalking bonefish on the flats along the mangrove shores of Grand Bahama Island. He claims that the cagey bonefish is the Holy Grail of piscine prey, "due largely to its fickle manner and unsurpassed acceleration... the fish is built for departure." At the Deep Water Cay Club ("the most famous bonefishing destination in the world"), Dombrowski meets the club's original guide, David Pinder, Sr., whose knack for finding "tailing bone" brought anglers from all over the world to what began as a private fishing refuge.
Body of Water is Pinder's story and that of his family of 11 children and 48 grandchildren--three generations of guides. It is also a metaphor-laced meditation on the art and practice of fly-fishing, the social and economic history of the Bahamas, the evolution of archipelago geology and the chronicle of Dombrowski's personal struggle to juggle his fishing and poetry obsessions against the financial needs of his own family. The fishing part is clear: find 'em, hook 'em, play 'em and land 'em--the world back home, not so much. In Body of Water, Dombrowski explores the zen-like balance he experiences while bonefishing and makes a good case that out on a skiff in the Bahama flats "we enter the prayerful closet of the senses and close the door." Fly-fishing mysticism at its best. --Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kan.