The One That Got Away

Rosalie I. Tennison is Editor of Communicator Magazine.

This is one of those books that you think is funny when you start it and
think is tedious when you finish it. The One That Got Away is 114 pages
of tall tales strung together loosely by the description of a fishing
trip. Stone certainly does not employ 17-pound-test line to keep his
readers hooked. The stories, while funny, are told one right after the
other and the brief descriptions of the fishing trip that serve to hold
the book together do not hold the reader’s interest.

Lovers of the outdoors, anglers, and hunters might enjoy skimming
through The One That Got Away to pick up some new tall tales to tell
after a day tracking moose or fishing. However, readers looking for
descriptions of life in the wild would do better to reread something by
Mowat or Grey Owl.

Stone’s tales are very much part of the oral tradition of the
outdoors and, while it might be valuable to have them committed to
paper, they would be much better told around a campfire. It would be a
lot more fun to read it aloud to friends than to read it silently. In an
outdoor setting, plot and character development are not as important as
discovering who can tell the biggest lie about the smallest fish. Stone
provides the would-be “yarner” with enough ammunition to astound the
most suspicious listener.