Synopses & Reviews
The lives of young Culver, his twice-married mother, and his charismatic uncle Jake have been always overshadowed by the death of Culver's father in a fishing accident. When a suspicious fire destroys the town mill and three murders occur, Culver is engulfed by the dangers he finds lurking in the place he'd come to call home. Love, death, coming of age, and Native American spiritual beliefs flow together with the forces of nature in this novel.
Review
"City boy though I am, I fell into Craig's Lesley's wonderfully told story as though it were my own....It reminded me once again of just how welcome you can feel in the midst of a novel." Alan Cheuse, National Public Radio
Review
"An accomplished book. Lesley's biblical, metaphoric invocations of fire and water are powerfully drawn...Unsentimental, vigorous and compassionate." Valerie Miner, The Boston Sunday Globe
Review
"An exquisite novel that holds the voices of the river and its people in perfect balance. It is a story that stays with you and grows between silences. Mr. Lesley is an empathetic force in fiction." Terry Tempest Williams
Review
"A complex and vivid and surprisingly funny book, a book I greatly admire." Robert Olen Butler
Review
"An exquisitely delineated map of America. All of our history is encompassed in its pages." Carolyn See
Review
"[Lesley's] well-defined characters pull us quickly into small-town life...and through them we discover another character, a wild river that runs through this wonderful novel like a great shudder." Barry Lopez
Review
"Though the novel contains a few too many flights of fly-fishing-inspired lyricism, it further establishes the author as a major voice in the fiction of the American West." Booklist
About the Author
Craig Lesley is a lifelong resident of the Pacific Northwest. He has received the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book Award for both
Winterkill and for
The Sky Fisherman. He is also the author of
River Song and
Storm Rider. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and two daughters.