"After he was handed an old broken down bamboo fly-fishing rod, Frank Soos waited several years before he cautiously undertook its restoration. That painstaking enterprise becomes the central metaphor and the unifying theme for the personal essays presented here. With sly wit and disarming candor, Soos recounts fly-fishing adventures that become points of departure for wide ranging ruminations on the larger questions that haunt him. Soos casts a skeptical eye on the engines of consumerism, reflects on the seductiveness of perfection, and celebrates the creative power that comes from mistakes. He offers fresh new perceptions about the human costs of the ever-accelerating pace of contemporary life and the increasingly hard work of resisting it."--BOOK JACKET.