The River Why

Contributors

By David James Duncan

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$19.99

Price

$25.99 CAD

Format:

  1. Trade Paperback $19.99 $25.99 CAD
  2. ebook $11.99 $15.99 CAD
  3. Audiobook Download (Unabridged)

This item is a preorder. Your payment method will be charged immediately, and the product is expected to ship on or around March 29, 2016. This date is subject to change due to shipping delays beyond our control.

The classic novel of fly fishing and spirituality republished with a new Afterword by the author.

Since its publication in 1983, The River Why has become a classic. David James Duncan’s sweeping novel is a coming-of-age comedy about love, nature, and the quest for self-discovery, written in a voice as distinct and powerful as any in American letters.

Gus Orviston is a young fly fisherman who leaves behind his comically schizoid family to find his own path. Taking refuge in a remote cabin, he sets out in pursuit of the Pacific Northwest’s elusive steelhead. But what begins as a physical quarry becomes a spiritual one as his quest for self-knowledge batters him with unforeseeable experiences.

Profoundly reflective about our connection to nature and to one another, The River Why is also a comedic rollercoaster. Like Gus, the reader emerges utterly changed, stripped bare by the journey Duncan so expertly navigates.

Genre:

  • Praise for The River Why:

    "A whirlwind, madcap, humorous and sensitive novel"
    New York Times
  • "A hymn to the waters of the earth and the wholeness of life. It is also funny."
    Miami Herald
  • "A veritable epic of flyfishing... done in a high-velocity, exuberant style, sprawling in scale, heedless of form... The feeling for and evocation of the imperiled natural world is rhapsodic in its intensity; the writing energetic, literary in a distinctly American way... So amiable is the prevailing tone that the flowing narrative is able to absorb Koranic and Eastern mysticisms, Tao, Sufism, Zen-the religions of oneness and gospel of love-without turning into the kind of maudlin choral chanting that so often disfigures treatments of fusion of self and the world."
    Publishers Weekly
  • This is a modern-repeat, modern -tale of maturity and redemption.
    Christian Science Monitor

On Sale
Mar 29, 2016
Page Count
432 pages
Publisher
Back Bay Books
ISBN-13
9780316261227

David James Duncan

About the Author

David James Duncan is the author of the novels The River Why and The Brothers K, the story collection River Teeth, and the nonfiction collections My Story as Told by Water (a National Book Award finalist), and God Laughs & Plays. His work has won three Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards, two Pushcart Prizes, a Lannan Fellowship, the Western States Book Award, inclusion in Best American Sports Writing, Best American Catholic Writing, two volumes of Best American Essays, five volumes of Best American Spiritual Writing, an honorary doctorate from University of Portland, the American Library Association's 2004 Award for the Preservation of Intellectual Freedom (with co-author Wendell Berry), and other honors. David lives on a charming little trout stream in Missoula, Montana, in accord with his late friend Jim Harrison’s advice to finish his life disguised as a creek.

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