Ghost Trout

GHOST TROUT is a series of narratives and essays that chronicle the search for the rare Humboldt cutthroat trout, and rivers and streams and their relationship to people and birds and dogs and the human condition. Pieces of the past are mingled with lives and deaths and a long-ago memory of a dance performed by the daughter of the California poet, Joaquin Miller. It's an extraordinary piece of writing. I know nothing about fly fishing. Many of the landscapes are unfamiliar to me (though a few I recognize). Yet I found myself deeply immersed and captivated and moved. The beauty of the language, its restraint, the deep and plainspoken thought-it's almost like a book length poem, or a kind of koan. The people spring to life in startlingly few words. The image of your dying neighbor and his single light bulb stubbornly burning will stay with me forever. I'm so glad [Hill] wrote it and so glad that I read it. I hope it finds its way into people's hands, because it deserves to be read. -Jesse Kellerman, novelist and playwright of Sunstroke, Trouble, The Genius, The Executor, Potboiler, and with his father, Jonathan Kellerman, The Golem of Hollywood.Ghost Trout is a wonderful book. It is poetic, but better than that the book is honest and the voice is trustworthy. -Louis Phillips, School of Visual Arts, New York City.What a splendid book! I read it slowly, a little bit each night before I went to sleep. I think my dreams were the better for it. -Dick Doores, general contractor in Marin County