Home Waters: Fishing with an Old Friend: A Memoir - Softcover

When the author discovers suspicious lumps on his 11-year-old golden retriever Nellie, rather than wait for a biopsy and the possibility of further decline, he decides it's time for one last great road trip. "I knew, lying next to her, that I was frightened for myself at least as much as for Nellie. I needed the steadiness of her demands, the consistency she brought to my life. I couldn't imagine days without her. So that night in bed I stayed close to her and whispered in her ear that she was a good girl, a Frisbee catcher, a lake swimmer." Whether or not the lumps are cancerous, the dog that saw him through a marriage and a divorce has gotten old. So they pack up the truck and make for points west. What transpires next is part elegy, part meditation on interspecies companionship, and part fishing memoir. Monninger writes lyrically about his bond with an animal and the landscape while staying true to the picaresque form in a casual manner that allows minor surprises along the way to gain cumulative power. Here he is describing the gift bestowed by a bend in the river after following Nellie's lead:

Trout rose everywhere I looked.... I could not believe my good fortune. As I stood quietly and listened, I heard the gurgle of water passing over rocks, the sound snapped to life by the quick surge of trout.... The rings of their feeding drifted above them, then disappeared in the water's pull. I remembered André Gide's line: "Fish die belly-up and rise to the surface; it's their way of falling."

Friendship, mortality, loneliness, the redemptive qualities of nature--this is the territory the author drives through with his faithful canine, a territory that will appeal to dog lovers and fly-fishers alike.

Joseph Monninger has published nine novels and three nonfiction books, including the memoir Home Waters, and has been awarded two National Endowment for the Arts fellowships. He lives and teaches in New Hampshire, where his family runs a sled-dog team.