Crossing the Waters: Following Jesus through the Storms, the Fish, the Doubt, and the Seas

Winner of the 2017 Christianity Today Book of the Year for Christian Living.Get ready for the wettest, stormiest, wildest trip through the Gospel you've ever taken!
The gospels are dramatic, wild, and wet -- set in a rich maritime culture on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus' first disciples were ragtag fishermen, and Jesus' messages and miracles teem with water, fish, fishermen, net-breaking catches, sea crossings, boat-sinking storms, and even a walk on water. Because this world is foreign and distant to us, we've missed much about the disciples' experiences and about following Jesus -- until now. Leslie Leyland Fields -- a well-known writer, respected biblical exegete, and longtime Alaskan fisherwoman -- crosses the waters of time and culture to take us out on the Sea of Galilee, through a rugged season of commercial fishing with her family in Alaska, and through the waters of the New Testament.

You'll be swept up in a fresh experience of the gospels, traveling with the fishermen disciples from Jesus' baptism to the final miraculous catch of fish -- and also experiencing Leslie's own efforts to follow Christ out on her own Alaskan sea. In a time when so many are "unfollowing" Jesus and leaving the Church, Crossing the Waters delivers a fresh encounter with Jesus and explores what it means to "come, follow me." Read more Continue reading Read less REVIEW
"What a grand and surprising book this is . . . Fields is a remarkable writer, very talented, very wise. She is, by vocation, not only a writer, but a fisher-person doing her work with her family on a remote island off the coast of mainland Alaska. This book includes some vivid telling of her wild experiences fishing in the dangerous seas of the Pacific Northwest. But here's the thing: besides being a woman's wilderness memoir and story of life in Alaska, it is also a study of faith.Crossing the Waters is a tremendous book, what review Mark Galli calls, 'a rare gift.'" ----- Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Booknotes

"Crossing the Waters" does what it promises to do: 'lead us across the waters of time and culture' into a new experience with Jesus and his 'rag-tag fishermen-disciples.' It beckons us to a deeper understanding of the life to which Jesus calls his followers---one that requires persistence, sacrifice, faithfulness and dependence---and in doing so, reminds us that our faith is never misplaced." ----Suanne Camfield, The Englewood Review of Books REVIEW
This book is a rare gift. It pulses with story and theology, with lived suffering and quiet joy, with vast mysteries and a strong Savior. The question is not whether you can put it down -- because that will be hard -- but whether you have the good sense first to pick it up, and read. Mark Galli, Editor in Chief, Christianity Today Read more Continue reading Read less