A naked girl gets swept downstream and is fished out by four women fly fishers. Tales of adventure, as well as stories of renewal, discovery, and tragedy follow the five women as they find each other (and themselves) through the sport of fly fishing. Through the voice of each character, The Reel Sisters fosters the notion that fly fishing has the potential to transcend age, gender, culture, and … culture, and even socioeconomic barriers, and can occasionally be the glue that binds us.
The Reel Sisters is a story about the power of women friendships, and how we learn a little bit about ourselves each time we step into the river. By the end of the book, you’ll want to start planning your own Reel Sisters adventures.
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The Reel Sisters by Michelle Cummings is a great book about a group of women who become friends because of their interest in fly fishing. When they rescue a women from the river, she is drawn into their circle of friends. As each of the main characters face the joys and challenges of life, they lean on their friends for support. You don’t need to know anything about fly fishing to enjoy this book.
I am very passionate about fly fishing, so when the opportunity fell in my lap to hear the author, a fly fisher herself, talk about how this book came to be as well as how fly fishing plays an important part in her life and in the story, I knew I had to read this book. I waited to finish reading, after I had been to Salida and Coaldale, CO and fished the Arkansas River for the first time, myself.
While this is a novel, the characters are quite real. I found myself thinking this character is like so-and-so in my life. I even found that fly fishing was a character as well. The experiences the women mastered/endured/suffered truly exist with fly fishers–regardless the gender. There are the days when I quit fishing because I have caught more than my body has the strength to catch. There are those days where I’ve been skunked; other days, offered the fish of a lifetime, all of which the author shares with readers via her characters and the emotions that accompanies those situations. Then, Cummings accurately portrays the settings where fly fishers find themselves–the boulders, the currents, swift waters, slow waters, hikes to out-of-the way, isolated spots–this is a novel with so many accuracies of real life, that it was easy to picture the views, the sounds, the smells, and the feelings associated with fly fishing, catching fish, or the frustration of not, releasing fish, tying flies, catching fish with personally tied flies with rods personally built, that it was surreal. At times, this reads as a novel, and at times, it reads as vignettes.
Some of the characters readers will bond with instantly; others may take awhile to enjoy. Regardless, there are aspects of each character with which fly fishers and outdoor enthusiasts can relate easily, even if one has only pondered learning fly fishing. For new fly fishers, there is much sage advice. For experienced fly fishers, there are so many call-to-mind memories, that sometimes laughter or tears are for what has actually happened to the reader, as well as the character in the story.
Regrettably, there is some language that precludes this novel for high school students and less mature audiences, regardless the quality of the novel. Even though it existed, I learned to skim over this aspect, as I felt the read was worth the roughness of one of the characters, who did scale back her language as the story progressed.
I am excited about and looking forward to the sequel!