It's no surprise, really, that a novelist of Craig Nova's range should find himself as drawn to trout as he is to words. Both are uncertain and private pursuits with lots of time for contemplation punctuated by plenty of setbacks and the occasional victory. Remarkably, each has a way of sustaining the other.

Nova's memoir is, sadly, small but the experiences he relates are anything but thin; anglers know there is just as much splendour in a game little fish as there is in one that's trophy-sized. On streams from Maine to the Catskills, he skilfully and revealingly connects his fly lines to his lifelines: His courtship, his marriage, his daughters, his writing. In one remarkable set piece, he recalls in splendid detail a bizarre episode, complete with the absurd intrigue of overt threats and secret mail drops, in which he becomes the target of an interstate extortion plot; Nova finds solace through the anxiety as he befriends--and fishes with--the FBI agent assigned to his case.

Why, in the end, does angling hook him so? One memorably lovely passage explains the essence of the union: "During important events in my life, I have gone fishing for brook trout. What I got out of this was not just the absence of what was confining or upsetting, but the presence of another quality altogether: These fish are forever associated in my mind with the depths of thankfulness for good fortune, just as they always reminded me of beauty and a sense of what may be possible after all." It is in that hopeful landscape of the possible that anglers--and writers--go to thrive. -- Jeff Silverman