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Rating: 
Summary: Fishing Below the Surface
Review: "Wishing My Father Well" is a brave, lucid, taut and tender book. In it, William Plummer provides a moving and efficient lesson about how much life and drama lie beneath unexamined surfaces, of a father's fishing diary or of a stream. With a gentle, lyric and occasionally comic touch, he exposes his sometimes harsh, often poignant personal struggle - as father, son and fisherman- to overcome misguided impulses, heart-rending fumblings, isolation and depression. As with all well-told love stories, the reader will ache over Plummer's mistakes and suffer the suspense of his tale's outcome because its handsomely-braided strands (Will he learn to read a stream? To treat his son as a child? To comprehend his father's retreat from the world of go-getters and learn to appreciate his passion for fishing nymphs?) reflect upon each other even as they bear witness to fundamental human experiences that are puzzles to us all. I am grateful for the personal risk Plummer took in writing a book of such compressed beauty and for his intelligent introduction to the mystique of fly-fishing, for which I wish him well.
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Summary: Wishing This Book Well
Review: A lovely and moving piece of work. Mr. Plummer writes with a grace and humor that belies the pain and conflict he has felt from his father.I know nothing of fly fishing, yet I loved this book and I recommed it to anyone and everyone.
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Summary: stream of consciousness
Review: Beautifully written, a little gem. Plummer probes the depths of father-son relationships as well as the ins and outs of fishing the nymph. In fact, he seems kowledgable on both counts -- and like someone you'd want to go fishing with.
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Summary: Hackneyed Theme
Review: I read this book as a courtesy to my old flyfishing partner who gave it to me as a Christmas gift. I could tell from the summary on the dusk jacket that I would probably not like it very much . I was correct. I did not like it very much even though the setting was in my own home State of New Jersey on rivers that I have fished many times myself. I am so tired of flyfishing-as-therapy books. It is a hackneyed theme. Plummer's book is certainly not as bad as Harry Middleton's unreadable, flyfishing-as-therapy book "The Bright Country" but Plummer's book is also mercifully shorter. This book should sell as well as (or as poorly as) Plummer's "Buttercups and Strong Boys." To summarize my opinion of the book using Plummer's own words (see page 86), in writing the book, Plummer "was simply going where many others had been, redoing what had already been done many times before." If one wants to read an entertaining flyfishing-as-therapy book, try "Fly Fishing through the Midlife Crisis."
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Summary: Wishing the Survivors Well
Review: This book was engaging & moving. I would not have read it save for the recommendation of a friend. You may be suprised at this delightful piece of work. I am very sorry to hear that Mr. Plummer and his adult son both died recently.
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Summary: A lovely Book
Review: This is a brave, beautiful memoir, spare and elegant and clear as water, yet teeming with insight and emotion. You don't have to care about fly-fishing to be inspired by what the author has done-he has found what matters most in life and seized it with all his might.This is a moving and satisfying fish story.
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Summary: A Tragic Legacy
Review: This is a lovely and very personal book. Bill Plummer writes with a passion and humor that is rarely found. His work serves at times as a painful mirror for his life while anticipating hope for the future. About a year after this book reached the shelves, Bill's son Nicky died in his sleep. During May of this year (2001) Bill himself was struck by a severe heart attack that killed him. The three men of "Wishing My Father Well" are with us now only on these pages. There is a great deal of life in this book. There is a great deal of Bill Plummer in these pages. Despite the losses that have occured, the book is warm, engaging, and humerous. I recommend that you invite Bill into your world through this work. I miss Bill very much.
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Summary: Baring his Soul and Recovering his Dad, his Son, and Himself
Review: This short book draws you in to the world of a man wounded by the end of his marriage and the subsequent death of his father. Plummer recovers his father in the South Branch of the Raritan River where he learns to fish using tips from his father's diaries. He makes you laugh at his mishaps and cheer him on as he learns not only about fishing and his father, but about himself. His troubles with fathering his own son make you weep. Anyone who has been through a divorce or has struggled with their children's adolescence can identify with Plummer as he reaches out to his son who is lost between Plummer's dictatorial ways and his mother's abandonment (she's too wrapped up in her relationship with her second husband to see what's happening). These are real people and even if you don't care about fly fishing you will care about them... and you may learn to care about the trout as well.
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Summary: Hackneyed Theme
Review: William Plummer's WISHING MY FATHER WELL hooked me immediately not because I fly fish (I don't) but because of what I might learn about searching for the truth about one's father. I was not disappointed. With a bent for heartfelt nuance, Plummer crisply leads the reader to a convincing, satisfying revelation in the book's finale, which in turn conveys good counsel for sons and fathers alike. An honest and wise book.
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