IN DEEP WATER

Three men fight for their lives after their boat sinks during a fishing trip.

Three middle-aged buddies go out for a fishing trip in Louisiana, never imagining the crisis about to unfold when their new boat suddenly sinks. Best-selling adventure writer Tougias (Fatal Forecast, The Finest Hours, etc.) expertly weaves a gripping narrative of their perilous brush with death. The day starts with a litany of common mistakes, from failing to tell family where they are headed and when they’ll return, to not checking if the life vests on board will fit. Indeed, one man is left wrangling a child-sized life vest that become unexpectedly crucial to his survival when a shark leaps at his face and takes a bite out the foam preserver instead. “The ill-fitting vest likely saved his life,” Tougias writes. “Foam is now spilling out of it and into the sea.” Interspersing historical details about other people who’ve been lost at sea adds depth to the narrative, and readers are bound to come away with tips for making their own future outings safer as a result. At times, the author’s descriptions of characters tend toward vague, broad-brush depictions, even the occasional cliche. But elsewhere, Tougias delivers action-driven detail at a speedy clip: the relentless jellyfish stings to the men’s legs and testicles, the thirst and delirium, the dark shadows of sharks circling beneath as blood spurts from a man’s wound, the long hours adrift in the gray-green water, the 10-foot “snarling breakers.” Through the eyes of three regular men who experience an extraordinary test of their will to live, the reader gets an up-close view of the realm “where the pain of living becomes greater than the fear of dying.”

An adrenaline-pumping, thoroughly readable tale.