River Songs: Moments of Wild Wonder in Fly Fishing

by Steve Duda, with illustrations by Matthew DeLorme, 2024. Hardcover, 192 pages.

Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Winner in Nature
Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist in Essays
Banff Mountain Book Competition Finalist in Adventure Travel

River Songs is rich with bracing, authentic, generous stories--writing that revels in language and spirit. Avoiding most of fly fishing’s clichés—the romantic elegies, the Moby-Dick-like conquests, the play-by-play detailing a "victory" over a fish—Steve Duda instead offers pieces that breathe lived experience, reveal vulnerabilities, and convey a broad perspective of what it means to have "a long run with a tight crew." Duda is interested in what has been learned out there on the river: what is it about this "ridiculous activity" that connects us to this planet, makes us human, gives us hope?

River Songs focuses on the in-between moments and the unexpected revelations—awe, fear, frustration, doubt, joy—that are as much a part of fishing as tying knots and chucking flies. Readers ride along with Duda in battered pickup trucks, fish "between jobs," look longingly at unfished famous rivers while touring with a country-punk band, and wonder how a fishing trip led to getting a tooth pulled while being surrounded by trash-talking friends. They will find beauty, discovery, heartbreak, good dogs, and the wonder of nature within the expanse of Northwest landscapes and beyond.