Nova's memoir is, sadly, short, but the experiences he relates are anything but thin; anglers know there is just as much splendor in a game little fish as there is in one that's trophy-size. On streams from Maine to the Catskills, he skillfully and revealingly connects his fly lines to his life lines: his courtship, his marriage, his daughters, his writing. In one remarkable set piece, he recalls in splendid detail a bizarre episode, complete with the absurd intrigue of overt threats and secret mail drops, in which he becomes the target of an interstate extortion plot; Nova finds solace through the anxiety as he befriends--and fishes with--the FBI agent assigned to his case.
Why, in the end, does angling hook him so? One memorably lovely passage explains the essence of the union: "During important events in my life, I have gone fishing for brook trout. What I got out of this was not just the absence of what was confining or upsetting, but the presence of another quality altogether: These fish are forever associated in my mind with the depths of thankfulness for good fortune, just as they always reminded me of beauty and a sense of what may be possible after all." It is in that hopeful landscape of the possible that anglers--and writers--go to thrive. --Jeff Silverman