I offer that much longer version of the story here, when and where we were first introduced to its principle players. Doing so means stepping away from my own tale for a lot more time than I'd like. Without what I keep calling Howard's story, however, everything that happened to Dan and me, all that badness that found us out and chased us down, makes far less sense than it does with it.

If I were to imagine a writing prompt that tasked me with inserting a story within a story that was longer than the main story proper, I would look to this book as guidance on how to do that properly. That may sound condescending, and like I'm accusing the author of performing just such a writing exercise for it's own sake, but that's not my intention; I simply have never read a book structured in this manner and it genuinely intrigued me.

The book begins with our first-person protagonist, introducing himself in the first line: "Don't call me Abraham: call me Abe." I'm sure there were a dozen other Moby Dick references and motifs that flew over my head during the course of this book, but at least I caught that one. Abe is a widower who starts a friendship with a younger coworker, Dan, who is also unfortunately a widower. The two men lost their wives in wildly different circumstances however, and it was interesting watching them dance around their respective emotional landmines and instead bond over a newfound interest in fishing.

Then comes the mother of all fishing tales, the life-changing trip that was just supposed to be a weekend outing at a new stream and instead ends up altering both their lives permanently. And Abe does a good job at hyping you up as the reader in anticipation of just what the hell happened out there. But in order for it to make sense, he stresses that he has to share a story about that very creek he heard second-hand the same day all this supposed craziness goes down. This side-story is honestly close to two-thirds the length of the book and had me hooked (pun intended) right from the start.

When Abe finally gets to his own personal events, it's a disturbing tale in its own right, but this middle portion of the book is where it really shines. There's an abrupt shift from a contemporary to a historical setting, and a whole town's worth of named characters are introduced to get to the bottom of some unexplainable events centered around a stranger known only as "The Guest."

Curiously, this is the second book I've read this year relating to old towns in Upstate New York that were destroyed to make room for a reservoir, the first being Scott Carson's The Chill. However where that book was about bitterness, scorn, and revenge, The Fisherman was focused more on themes of grief, the poor decisions it can drive us to make, and the consequences of messing with things we don't fully understand. The relocated residents of this book don't find a means of retribution or settling the score against the government that uproots them, they find something so much worse that they would've been better off not finding it at all.

I loved the mental landscapes this book took me to, the unsettling events that happened to the workers building the first reservoir, and the overwhelming sense of insignificance that oppressively weighed down on the characters during both of this book's climaxes. This is the first year that I've made an active effort to expose myself to horror novels, and while there's a time and place for ghost stories and slasher thrillers, this book struck the exact flavor of terror that I've been looking for.