In Search of Joel Gomez is a riveting adventure and love story. It begins when thirty-five-year old Mickey Mazen, a Philadelphia writer and father-to be, finds himself at a crossroads. His last business venture has just gone down the tubes and his wife is about to deliver their first child. Reluctantly, he put his dreams on hold and enters the lucrative but grueling enterprise of buying and exporting an unusual product: The American eel. "You buy for fifty cents, and you sell for eighteen dollars," says Geltman, the old Jewish patriarch who created the company. "That's a good business." But this no simple business, and Mazen finds himself on a perpetual road trip, from the remote fishing villages of Nova Scotia, to the rivers of North Carolina, and ultimately deep into the jungles of the Dominican Republic, in search of the elusive, and the increasingly over-fished, eel. While he is totally absorbed in making the enterprise a success, Mazen's social and artistic life begins to disintegrate, and he is in a constant battle to keep the business alive. As the competition encroaches on his fishermen, greed, deception, and crime rear their ugly heads. It's an arduous journey, but what he discovers in the end, is much deadlier than anything he could have imagined and he is forced to make a choice that will change his life forever.