Brook Trout and the Writing Life
Eno Publishers POBox 158 Hillsborough NC 27278 919.632.6893
Brook Trout and the Writing Life
The Intermingling of Fishing
and Writing in a Novelist's Life
By Craig Nova
Introduction by Ann Beattie
In this memoir, novelist Craig Nova explores the interconnections between his work as a writer, his personal life, and his passion for fly-fishing. He writes about his courtship, marriage, the birth of his children, and his life as a father, husband, writer, friend, and fisherman. The author observes the elusive and beautiful brook trout in the tea-colored streams he fishes, intermingling those moments with events, some subtle, some joyful, some dark, from daily life: He gazes at his wife in a hammock by a stream; he builds an igloo with his daughter; he copes with the fallout of a very public mean-spirited review of his new novel; he defends his family against a random blackmailer. Unpredictable and keenly observed, the narrative reveals the writer's world and his relationship to nature. It is a paean to the beauty of the brook trout.