The first time I read Janet Messineo’s writing was as a greenhorn copyeditor at On The Water in 2006. My manager at the time, Editor Gene Bourque, forwarded her story to me with some editing advice:
“Go light. Janet’s the real deal.”
Among fishermen, where truth-stretching and self-aggrandizing is the norm, there’s no bigger compliment. To be someone who tells it like it is. To be real. To be authentic.
Messineo is all those things, and despite her insistence that she’s not a writer, she’s a natural storyteller. Without stringing together dozens of adjectives or torturing sentences in search of the perfect turn of phrase, she effortlessly conveys the tangible and intangible elements of surfcasting. Her descriptions of the relentless hope that renews with every cast and drives hard-core fishermen to stay out long after it’s stopped being fun are recognizable to anyone who has fished and enlightening to anyone who has not.
Messineo has spent most of her fishing life proving to others what she’s always known – that she deserves to be considered a serious surfcaster, as capable as any man of catching and landing a huge fish. With grit and determination, willing herself through countless dark nights, she gained grudging acceptance into the insular club of Vineyard fishermen.
“Casting Into The Light: Tales of a Fishing Life” goes beyond fish-catching stories and describes how Messineo’s life path intersected with and was ultimately shaped by fishing – how it helped her move past drugs and alcohol, become a celebrated taxidermist, and form deeply meaningful relationships within the secretive and solitary world of surfcasting.
While Messineo’s toughness is obvious, her memoir also reveals vulnerabilities. She admits to mistakes, failures, and struggles to achieve personal goals. She describes feeling fear while fishing at night, confessing that “the fear of being attached to a submerged fighting mysterious weight under the cold, dark ocean” is what drives her fishing compulsion.
Like honesty, vulnerability is rarely on display in the male-dominated surfcasting community. How fitting that after having to prove she belongs despite being a woman, it’s perhaps because she is a woman that she was able to write a memoir that deserves a spot among the best books ever written about surfcasting.
“Casting Into The Light: Tales of a Fishing Life” is available for purchase at Amazon and independent book stores.
EVENTS:
PLAINVILLE, MA
Jul 10
Janet Messineo at AN UNLIKELY STORY
West Tisbury, MA
Jul 18
Janet Messineo at West Tisbury Library
Braintree, MA
Jul 24
Janet Messineo at Viking Club
EAST SANDWICH, MA
Jul 25
Janet Messineo at TITCOMB’S BOOKSHOP
WESTERLY, RI
Jul 30
Janet Messineo at SAVOY BOOKSHOP & CAFE BANK SQUARE BOOKS
Chilmark, MA
Aug 4
Janet Messineo at Martha’s Vineyard Book Festival, Chilmark Community Center
Chilmark, MA
Sep 4
Janet Messineo at Chilmark Library
Oak Bluffs, MA
Sep 12
Janet Messineo at Oak Bluffs Library
Great story!!
kinda sad that to get honest and truly creative writing that is enjoyable we need to turn away from the MSM and look to people like this..kevin and janet..thank you. i will request this book at my local library
I only get to go surf fishing in NJ a few times per year, not enough to gain too much experience. Janet’s book is amazing. I am on page 200 and learning so much I didn’t know about surf fishing.
Janet please come to South Jersey for a book signing – so many of us lady surf anglers want to meet you!