A Stretch On The River

In this largely autobiographical story, the lively and nonstop dialogue portrays the excitement, humor, and independence of a hard-working steamboat crew on the upper Mississippi.

Idaho's clear flowing rivers are world famous for fly fishing, but finding that elusive perfect spot to land a trophy in the vast wilderness requires a lot of time and knowledge. Fortunately, writer, angler and conservationist Chris Hunt has traveled to some of the state's most idyllic areas to find the best fishing the Gem State has to offer. Adventurous anglers can follow his directions off the beaten path to enjoy excellent scenery and even better fishing. Brimming with expert tips and seasonal strategies for each location, this handy guide will find its place in a dry pocket for every successful excursion.

“Beautiful. ... A lyrical companion to his father’s classic, A River Runs through It, chronicling their family’s history and bond with Montana’s Blackfoot River.” —Washington Post A "poetic" and "captivating" (Publishers Weekly) memoir about the power of place to shape generations, Home Waters is John N. Maclean's remarkable chronicle of his family's century-long love affair with Montana's majestic Blackfoot River, the setting for his father's classic novella, A River Runs through It. Maclean returns annually to the simple family cabin that his grandfather built by hand, still in search of the trout of a lifetime. When he hooks it at last, decades of longing promise to be fulfilled, inspiring John, reporter and author, to finally write the story he was born to tell. A book that will resonate with everyone who feels deeply rooted to a landscape, Home Waters is a portrait of a family who claimed a river, from one generation to the next, of how this family came of age in the 20th century and later as they scattered across the country, faced tragedy and success, yet were always drawn back to the waters that bound them together. Here are the true stories behind the beloved characters fictionalized in A River Runs through It, including the Reverend Maclean, the patriarch who introduced the family to fishing; Norman, who balanced a life divided between literature and the tug of the rugged West; and tragic yet luminous Paul (played by Brad Pitt in Robert Redford’s film adaptation), whose mysterious death has haunted the family and led John to investigate his uncle’s murder and reveal new details in these pages. A universal story about nature, family, and the art of fly fishing, Maclean’s memoir beautifully captures the inextricable ways our personal histories are linked to the places we come from—our home waters. Featuring twelve wood engravings by Wesley W. Bates and a map of the Blackfoot River region.

A gorgeous new centennial edition of Ernest Hemingway’s landmark short story of returning veteran Nick Adams’s solo fishing trip in Michigan’s rugged Upper Peninsula, illustrated with specially commissioned artwork by master engraver Chris Wormell and featuring a revelatory foreword by John N. Maclean. "The finest story of the outdoors in American literature." —Sports Illustrated A century since its publication in the collection In Our Time, “Big Two-Hearted River” has helped shape language and literature in America and across the globe, and its magnetic pull continues to draw readers, writers, and critics. The story is the best early example of Ernest Hemingway’s now-familiar writing style: short sentences, punchy nouns and verbs, few adjectives and adverbs, and a seductive cadence. Easy to imitate, difficult to match. The subject matter of the story has inspired generations of writers to believe that fly fishing can be literature. More than any of his stories, it depends on his ‘iceberg theory’ of literature, the notion that leaving essential parts of a story unsaid, the underwater portion of the iceberg, adds to its power. Taken in context with his other work, it marks Hemingway’s passage from boyish writer to accomplished author: nothing big came before it, novels and stories poured out after it. —from the foreword by John N. Maclean

A Mississippi river yarn about the crew of a towboat at the beginning of WW II. Bissell tells it like it is. This is how they talked, this is how they lived, and sometimes, eloquently and tenderly, this is how they died. Unerringly and with great authenticity, Bissell tells the story of the river and why it grips the men who love it.

In the 1950s, a series of dams was proposed along the Brazos River in north-central Texas. For John Graves, this project meant that if the stream’s regimen was thus changed, the beautiful and sometimes brutal surrounding countryside would also change, as would the lives of the people whose rugged ancestors had eked out an existence there. Graves therefore decided to visit that stretch of the river, which he had known intimately as a youth. Goodbye to a River is his account of that farewell canoe voyage. As he braves rapids and fatigue and the fickle autumn weather, he muses upon old blood feuds of the region and violent skirmishes with native tribes, and retells wild stories of courage and cowardice and deceit that shaped both the river’s people and the land during frontier times and later. Nearly half a century after its initial publication, Goodbye to a River is a true American classic, a vivid narrative about an exciting journey and a powerful tribute to a vanishing way of life and its ever-changing natural environment.

In the sixth novel in the acclaimed Sean Stranahan mystery series, Montana's favorite detective finds himself on the trail of Ernest Hemingway's missing steamer trunk. “Keith McCafferty is a top-notch, first-rate, can’t-miss novelist.” —C.J. Box, #1 New York Times bestselling author When a woman goes missing in a spring snowstorm and is found dead in a bear's den, Sheriff Martha Ettinger reunites with her once-again lover Sean Stranahan to investigate. In a pannier of the dead woman's horse, they find a wallet of old trout flies, the leather engraved with the initials EH. Only a few days before, Patrick Willoughby, the president of the Madison River Liars and Fly Tiers Club, had been approached by a man selling fishing gear that he claimed once belonged to Ernest Hemingway. A coincidence? Sean doesn't think so, and he soon finds himself on the trail of a stolen trunk rumored to contain not only the famous writer's valuable fly fishing gear but priceless pages of unpublished work. The investigation will take Sean through extraordinary chapters in Hemingway's life. Inspired by a true story, Cold Hearted River is a thrilling adventure, moving from Montana to Michigan, where a woman grapples with the secrets in her heart, to a cabin in Wyoming under the Froze To Death Plateau, and finally to the ruins in Havana, where an old man struggles to complete his life's mission one true sentence at a time.

When a team of five explorers embarked on a 1,200-mile journey down the Rio Grande, the river that marks the southern boundary of Texas and the US-Mexico border, their goal was to experience and capture on film the rugged landscapes of this vast frontier before the controversial construction of a border wall changed this part of the river forever. The crew—Texas filmmaker Ben Masters, Brazilian immigrant Filipe DeAndrade, Texas conservationist Jay Kleberg, wildlife biologist Heather Mackey, and Guatemalan-American river guide Austin Alvarado—began the trip in El Paso, pedaling mountain bikes through the city’s dry river bed. Their path took them on horseback through the Big Bend, down the Wild and Scenic stretch of the river in canoes, and back to bikes from Laredo to Brownsville. They paddled the last ten miles through a forest of river cane to the Gulf of Mexico. As they made their way to the Gulf, they met and talked with the people who know and live on the river—border patrol, wildlife biologists, ranchers, politicians, farmers, social workers, locals, and travelers. They climbed the wall (in twenty seconds). They encountered rare black bears, bighorn sheep, and birds of all kinds. And they sought to understand the complexities of immigration, the efficacy of a wall, and the impact of its construction on water access, wildlife, and the culture of the borderlands. The River and the Wall is both a wild adventure on a spectacular river and a sobering commentary on the realities of walling it off.