A powerful true story of one man's spiritual and emotional healing on the home waters of his childhood. Lured by the dream of catching a great fish in the middle years of his life, the author is drawn into an initiation in which he must decide to live fully or to die.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
"Fly Fishermen soon realize there is more the sport than catching fish. It becomes a way of living. -- Bernard
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
From the Publisher
In the tradition of MacLean’s A River Runs Through It, and Dodson’s Faithful Travelers, the book Healing the Fisher King: A Fly Fisher’s Quest, is the story of one man’s journey in 1997 to the familiar waters of his childhood -- to the south Texas, primitive coastal estuary known as the Lower Laguna Madre.
A second, relatively brief story appears in one- to two-page segments at the beginning of each chapter and recounts a recent ordeal with a life-threatening cholera-like infection brought on by a stingray’s wound. The stingray attack is clearly foreshadowed by the dreams and events chronicled in the main chapters and effectively completes the original account. Lured by a desire to catch a giant speckled trout -- but directed by a luminous dream that points to the Laguna Madre as the setting for healing and transformation -- Sparrow takes his boat and his eight-year-old son on a journey from Virginia to south Texas that proves more difficult and more meaningful than he imagines. He soon discovers that the unresolved pain in his life -- stemming, in part, from his parents’ divorce and now his own -- is also alive in his son, who feels deeply wounded and angry at his father for leaving him. As they spend the first ten days fishing together, Sparrow and his son spiral into a dark place that is, at first, confusing and disturbing. The author draws upon the legend of the Fisher King and the Holy Grail, Jungian psychology, and his family’s past in order to arrive at a way to address his son’s needs, as well as his own. Their time on the water culminates in a powerfully moving exchange that opens the way for a more trusting relationship between father and son. As the author begins his concerted fly fishing search for the fish so aptly named named cynoscion nebulosis (i.e. starry nebulae), his experiences soon reveal the spiritual dimensions of the quest, in which the search for a great fish mirrors his lifelong yearning for communion with God. Making his way slowly toward the great fish and the wholeness that he seeks, he must, however, confront his own "shadow" before he can proceed any further toward the goal. He is led throughout by radiant dreams, mystical encounters, his knowledge of spiritual traditions, and a willingness to face his own past with ruthless honesty. Sparrow then confronts a new initiation brought on by the appearance in his dreams and reveries of a feminine presence, or anima, who seems intent on bringing him to an awareness of what he has done all his life -- recoiling from his feelings, breaking promises, and denying his deeper needs. He relives earlier experiences in which he remained aloof from his heart, including an encounter with a Mexican prostitute when he was 15, the loss of a beautiful hawk through his negligence, and his failure to catch the fish of a lifetime in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Against a backdrop of rich, but largely failed fly fishing experiences, Sparrow considers how his parents fell short of their own dreams, and realizes that he has to follow his own path, rather than to live out a pattern of denying his soul’s sincere desire. While he makes progress toward understanding his lifelong resistance and how it affects his fly fishing efforts, Sparrow nonetheless sets the stage -- by breaking a promise that he makes with God -- for an eventual encounter with death through the agency of a stingray’s painful wound. Becoming infected with Vibrio vulnificus, a deadly bacteria in the cholera family, he eventually realizes that he has a choice -- to live fully, or to die. The resolution of this crisis parallels the author’s consideration of the importance of the body on the spiritual journey. Drawing on his own past, his mother’s search for meaning, and examples from Tibetan Buddhism and Medieval Christianity, Sparrow becomes aware of the grief he holds concerning his mother and the debt he owes her for giving him life. With the help of his mentor Chas Matthews -- to whom the book is dedicated – Sparrow experiences a powerful encounter with his mother’s memory that paves the way for his emotional rebirth. In the end, he invites Kathy -- the woman whose love he spurned at the beginning of the journey -- to join him for the end of his retreat. With Kathy by his side, Sparrow meets new tests that spring up around his relationship with his brother. Meanwhile, Scott and Kathy find themselves being drawn inexorably into the natural realm -- to the point where a sense of oneness is experienced through dreams and remarkable encounters with the animals that inhabit the Laguna Madre. In the end, Sparrow experiences the beginning of a new life that awaits him. Sparrow’s extraordinarily intimate relationship with Spirit and his candor about his own struggles puts the reader in touch with ageless spiritual truths grounded in the immediacy of human contact --This text refers to the Paperback edition.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Genres: Reality Studies, Male Personal Revelation, Inner Travel, American Nature Sports, Father-Son Relating,
By Strephon Kaplan-Williams "writer" (Netherlands-America) - See all my reviews
This review is from: HEALING THE FISHER KING: A Fly Fisher's Quest (Hardcover)
As a writer and dreamwork psychologist myself I find Dr. Scott Sparrow's book an inspiration to read.I recommend this book highly as a journey especially for men, and for women who appreciate their men. What this book has, which is perhaps lacking in many popular spiritual books, is showing the author as a human being living his life journey as all of us can live ours. Scott Sparrow will take you through your own childhood relationship with a parent and how that affects you in adult life, not by giving you psychology, but by your participating in certain life episodes important to him personally and spiritually. The book is an excellent read in the Americana of being in nature in only the way Americans do it. Scott admits he grew up as a competitor and still is one in his chosen sport of serious fly fishing in South Texas. He is strong in his relationships with men. Scott is a man's man but not macho. He is not interested in seducing women but in relating to them. He is not interested in boasting to his fellow males about his accomplishments, yet he is interested in doing extremely well at what he does. There is another side to Scott Sparrow. He has been since childhood a natural mystic because of his dreams. Dreams have always signaled new developments in his life for better and for worse. Scott is no saint, as he is sure to reveal to us. Yet he redeems himself through remorse and action. He not only achieves impressively in the world and in the sport of fly fishing, he also works on himself. This is a male who works on himself, girls, the ideal man! And men, watch out! You need to work on yourselves also and take how your behavior affects others with genuine conscience. But Scott is at times even deeper because his dreams have transpersonal elements of white light experiences and revelations. In a nature society of the past he would be known as both a warrior and spirit shaman. Read this book for yourself so that you may experience what it is like to quest on a spiritual journey, yet not give up your ordinary life you were born to. Scott does not retreat into monasteries and Himalayan caves. He goes sports fishing, and he takes his dad and son, and his best male friend with him, and also his pilot brother. And he brings his wife also because she has adapted to the fly fishing way of life. Recommended for many levels of reading: Father-son relating, Right relationship relating with the opposite sex, inner-outer relating with oneself, spiritual awakening and individual God-relating through dreams, practice of devotion and visions. Scott does not hide his shadow, his extreme side that sometimes hurts himself and others. Scott grows up into a real adult and tells us some of those episodes. Yet, while Scott is personally revealing he is never narcissistic completely. His natural self-centeredness is balanced with devotion to others close to him and by his extraordinary dreams which he takes seriously, learning from them that he is not in charge. Scott is a fine, natural writer, finding just the right words to convey emotion and experience together, crisp in language. No extra words there in his prose. Probably he learned from fly fishing, which is his great metaphor for living life spiritually. Apparently only the right fly will do. Good writers feel the same way. Only the right words will do to convey the right feeling and essence of an experience. Read Scott Sparrow and enjoy a few hours out of your own life into his. You will appreciate the contrast. I for one got to live again my boyhood. I use him and his father as the father I might have liked to have, had I not my own father to deal with. I felt right at home on the Bayou, so to speak. Oh, Scott gets into trouble. You cannot believe his unconsciousness in not getting himself treated right away after a terrible wounding by a stingray. But that is Scott! He never presents himself as perfect, and neither am I. And neither are you, reader. So enjoy his book, as I am. Recommended for adults who travel inwardly, for high school and university classrooms in contemporary American literature that reflect a genuine experience of connecting the past and present in the America of today. For students also to do good book reviews and essays, and to feel in tune with their own appreciation of life. A real book, unlike so many books that stay in the mind, or let you live through others and not yourself.
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