South Florida’s Fishing Paradise is the kind of book you don’t get to see much anymore. Different in probably a couple of ways, First, It’s so well-written you might be hard pressed to recognize it as a ‘fishing’ book. Second, it’s a really good fishing book. And there have never been very many of them around at any time. When I say the writing is good, well you’ll have to see for yourself and use your own definition. Mine is that the prose is clean, fairly often poetic as good prose has a tendency to be, and also that the prose lets you feel you are in touch with the voice behind it. This is not a style that masks the personality of the author, nor on the other hand one that makes you feel the author is pushing himself in your face just so you can see him more clearly. This is a book that is about the stuff that it is about, real stuff. Be warned, it is not a how to catch fish book, although you’ll discover a lot about that too. It’s not an overt lament about loss of habitat either, although it is also that. So here you have a wonderful recreation of a life lived in the passionate focused pursuit of fish and fishing, a recreation that conveys the stunning, devastating recognition, that it is not necessarily the case that we’ll all always have such opportunities to connect intimately with our world. I’ve already read it, of course, but I might just read it again right now.

Alan Kennedy
Professor Emeritus of English
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh PA