"The Fourth Fisherman" by Joe Kissack

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Five fishermen set out in a small boat for a few days' fishing trip. They run out of fuel and are carried out across the ocean. Two of the fishermen don't make it, but three survive the nine months and are heralded as a miracle when they are rescued thousands of miles from home.

Joe Kissak has it all--or so he thinks. In the race to get ahead, he actually starts a downward spiral to nearly losing everything through drugs and alcohol before "finding God".

I have to admit, I was very disappointed in this book. I was expecting a book on the fishermen's story--with God as the "fourth fisherman", and maybe a couple of chapters or so relating how the story affected the author. It was so very not what I was expecting! Out of forty chapters (not counting the epilogue), only SIX were about the fishermen's story. They were mentioned some later in the book, but very little. The book was mainly focused on the author and his story and the two really didn't seem to relate. Everything was about Joe Kissack and, frankly, he struck me as a very self-centered man. Nearly half the book is about his struggle to connect with the men and get them to sign the papers giving him the rights to their story so he could make a movie out of it--which still has yet to me done.

This story was supposedly about faith, but the "faith" talked about was very vague. Joe's "salvation" experience had nothing to do with the salvation of the Bible: no repentance, no trusting in Christ and his death, burial and resurrection--just a feeling of peace. "Christianity" is reduced to anyone who talks about God, and nothing of his family's view of God or religion is even mentioned that I noticed.

I really, really wanted to love this book. Unfortunately, it left me frustrated and annoyed wanting the fullness of the fishermen's story and not so much of Joe.

I received this book for free from WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group for this review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

http://waterbrookmultnomah.com/blog/2...

http://www.thefourthfisherman.com/