Finding Fish

Finding Fish

Author: Antwone Quenton Fisher
Desc: The memoir of Antwone Fisher's miraculous journey from abandonment and abuse to liberation manhood and extraordinary success. "A striking and original story of the journey from troubled childhood to self-aware adult." Soon to be a major motion picture starring and directed by Denzel Washington Finding Fish is the memoir of Antwone Fisher's miraculous journey from abandonment and abuse to liberation manhood and extraordinary success--a modern-day Oliver Twist. Baby Boy Fisher--as he was documented in his child welfare caseworkers' reports--was raised in institutions from the moment of his birth in prison to a single mother. After beginning his life in an orphanage Antwone was placed in a temporary foster home until around age two he was transferred to a second foster home. It was there over the next thirteen years that he endured emotional abandonment and physical abuse. Removed from this foster home not long before his sixteenth birthday Antwone found fleeting refuge in a boys' reform school but was soon thrust into the nightmare of homelessness. Though convinced he was unwanted and unworthy Fish as he came to be known refused to allow his spirit to be broken. Instead he became determined to raise himself to listen to social workers and teachers who intervened on his behalf and to nurture a romantic heart along with a scathing sense of humor and a wondrous imagination--all of which sustained him with big dreams of a better day. Fatefully just as Antwone's life on the streets hit rock bottom he enlisted in the United States Navy where he remained for the next eleven years. During that time Fish became a man of the world raised by the Navy family he created for himself. Finding Fish shows how out of this unlikely mix of deprivation and hope an artist was born--first as the child who painted the feelings his words dared not speak then as a poet and storyteller who would eventually become one of Hollywood's most well-paid sought-after screenwriters. But before he ascends those lofty steps Antwone's story takes us from the Navy to his jobs as a federal correctional officer and then a security guard at Sony Pictures in Hollywood. In its climactic conclusion the mystery of his identity is finally unraveled as Antwone returns to Cleveland to locate his mother's and father's surviving family members. A tumultuous and ultimately gratifying tale of self-discovery written in Fisher's gritty yet melodic literary voice Finding Fish is an unforgettable reading experience.