The Book of Ribbner
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Pub Date Jul 27 2026 | Archive Date Feb 15 2027
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Description
A lonely intrepid fisherman. A sacred fish. A one-legged pirate. And the loneliest whale ever to live.
The Book of Ribbner is at once a young woman's spiritual journey from tragic loss to salvation and, at another, humanity's trek from its harmonious connection with nature to its unsustainable disconnection with it.
It is at once the story of an intrepid adventure across four continents and at another a tale of epic fishing battles in the remotest parts of the world, taking the reader on a harrowing journey from Sweden to Cape Verde to the Amazon Basin to the Seychelles and to its climactic ending in Bhutan where Hannah Ribbner, a 33-year-old professional fisherman and photographer, experiences a spiritual revelation while she makes a humanity-altering choice. Will she kill the Last Sacred Golden Mahseer?
Along the way, inspired by the song of the loneliest whale to ever live, she meets scallywags, pirate hunters, fish killers, and a modern-day Blackbeard, Edwin Finch Odershop ("Chop"), a South Carolinian searching for the same resolution as Hannah - love's lost harmony.
The Book of Ribbner is at all times a religious allegory of humanity's battle for its soul in the age of Al.
Advance Praise
“Vergnolle writes the world’s great waters with the authority of an adventurer and the imagination of a mythmaker. The result is a bold blend of literary fiction, environmental allegory, spiritual quest, and AI-age warning—anchored by unforgettable characters and a final moral choice that lingers.”
Fishing fiction transformed into modern myth
“From a record pike in Sweden to the sacred waters of Bhutan, this novel moves with cinematic force. Beneath its danger, humor, and globe-spanning spectacle lies an urgent question: what are human beings willing to protect when technology, appetite, and loss tempt us to abandon what is sacred?”
An epic with a conscience
“The Book of Ribbner casts far beyond the conventions of the fishing novel. Ronnie Vergnolle combines pulse-quickening battles at sea with an intimate meditation on grief, faith, and humanity’s vanishing capacity for awe. Hannah Ribbner is a magnetic guide through a story that is as spiritually ambitious as it is adventurous.”
A wild, visionary adventure
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781972090459 |
| PRICE | $21.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 372 |