Witty, shrewd, and, as always, a joy to read, John Gierach, "America's
best fishing writer" (Houston Chronicle) and favorite streamside
philosopher, extols the frequent joys and occasional tribulations of the
fly-fishing life.
"After five decades, twenty books, and countless columns, [John
Gierach] is still a master" (Forbes). Now, in his latest fresh and
original collection, Gierach shows us why fly-fishing is the perfect
antidote to everything that is wrong with the world.
"Gierach's deceptively laconic prose masks an accomplished
storyteller...His alert and slightly off-kilter observations place him
in the general neighborhood of Mark Twain and James Thurber"
(Publishers Weekly). In Dumb Luck and the Kindness of Strangers,
Gierach looks back to the long-ago day when he bought his first resident
fishing license in Colorado, where the fishing season never ends, and
just knew he was in the right place. And he succinctly sums up part of
the appeal of his sport when he writes that it is "an acquired taste
that reintroduces the chaos of uncertainty back into our well-regulated
lives."
Lifelong fisherman though he is, Gierach can write with self-deprecating
humor about his own fishing misadventures, confessing that despite all
his experience, he is still capable of blowing a strike by a fish "in
the usual amateur way." The "voice of the common angler" (The Wall
Street Journal), he offers witty, trenchant observations not just about
fly-fishing itself but also about how one's love of fly-fishing shapes
the world that we choose to make for ourselves.
