| Black River Dreams
Maximilian Werner
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Black River Dreams is a celebration of the fly fishing life. It is also a record of human awakening. Alternately lyrical and meditative, mystical and sensuous, each of these sixteen essays represents an exploration of the intersection between past and present, spirit and body, water and land, trout and people, ghosts and dreams. Whether Mr. Werner is describing his first and last time fly fishing as a boy on a stream in northern Maine; or the experience of sitting on the river bank with a dear old friend who, moments earlier, told him he had cancer; or the many golden evenings he and his wife cast big dry flies to Apache trout cruising in the dim mountain light, he brings an ecologically informed, poetic sensibility to all of his fly fishing encounters.
Praise for Black River Dreams
From a trout caught in a Maine river to adventures in Utah and throughout the West, a rare and mysterious texture envelopes this fine first book by a haunting new writer. There is always more to fishing than fish, Black River Dreams insists. Fly fishing is inextricably bound to life and love and the natural world, and to memory—and the deeper one descends into the "watery dark," the more one belongs to life.
— Nick Lyons, author, editor, and publisher
What we want in a book that is a celebration and a prayer to the world is the world—some real water, real fish, old friends, maybe a bear in the back of the truck, real morning, real night, and some real weather. Maximilian Werner has written an elegant invitation to share these things; in Black River Dreams every sentence pries at us to see, to feel, finally perhaps to get up in a while and go outside.
— Ron Carlson, author of The Signal and Five Skies
A non-fisherman, I cast my mind into Black River Dreams expecting to find myself quickly out of my depth. Instead, I was carried along by the current of Maximilian Werner's narratives of fly fishing obsession, buoyed by poetry and stabilized by philosophy. With this impressive first book, Werner joins the tradition of Maclean, Leeson, Duncan, and Barilla, among many others, showing that fly fishing and writing make a fine "double major."
— Scott Slovic, author of Going Away to Think: Engagement, Retreat, and Ecocritical Responsibility
Black River Dreams is a worthy addition to a genre that includes such classics as The Compleat Angler and A River Runs through It. Whether you're a fisherman or not, you'll find Werner's lovely language—like glitter on water—well worth your time.
— Lola Haskins, author of Desire Lines
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| The Author
Maximilian Werner was born in Idaho and reared in Maine and Utah. He now lives in Salt Lake City with his wife and two children. His essays have appeared in several journals and magazines, including The North American Review, Yale Anglers' Journal, ISLE, Weber Studies, Fly Rod and Reel, and Sporting Classics. Mr. Werner's essay "Anglers' Ball" was first runner-up for the 2008 Robert Traver Fly Fishing Writing Award, and his column, My Utah Stories, appears bimonthly on Fly Rod and Reel Online. Black River Dreams won the 2008 Utah Arts Council's Original Writing Award for Nonfiction: Book. Mr. Werner teaches writing at the University of Utah.
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$24.95 | Hardcover | 176 pages | 6x9 | © 2010
ISBN-13: 978-1-936008-02-5
ISBN-10: 1-936008-02-5
Published by Barclay Creek Press
Distributed by Stackpole Books
Individuals can order from your local bookstore, Stackpole, or Amazon
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