Customer Reviews

The Bright Country

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I can't write Harry Middleton to tell him how much I admire his writing, or how much his stories and themes resonate in me. He died not long ago. And if I may quote Russell Chatham, "It hurts to know that Harry Middleton rode the back of a garbage truck every night during the wee hours to put groceries on his family's table." It's true. It's part of this story.

This is the moving, affecting story of Middleton's struggle with depression, his mother's death of brain cancer, and, most memorably, a blind trout on the South Fork of the Platte River. Like all of Middleton's books, the language is wonderful and the characters are memorable. Perhaps more so than most, this book is Middleton laying his soul bare, telling a story as it happened, cutting close to the bone.

And if flyfishing isn't the whole story here, it is part of the path to redemption.

Harry, we hardly knew you, and I wish there had been more time, and more books. But you will live on for me and for those readers who discover you. Ollie ollie oxen free.

THE BRIGHT COUNTRY is a heartbreakingly beautiful, sad, hilarious, touching book that flows and burbles along like a favorite trout stream. I've probably bought 6-8 copies of the book over the years and loaned, given or otherwise forced it upon at least twice that number of people. It's not a perfect novel, but is easily the most honest look I've ever encountered into the heart of a guy I wish I'd had the opportunity to know. There's more than a little bit of trout fishing, but this is a book that hooks non-anglers as well.

Harry Middleton had a vocabulary to shame this English major; keeping a dictionary at hand upon first reading "The Bright Country" was imperative.

Middleton's deep understanding of the "Meat Bucket Blues," along with his compassion for the marginalized and his passion for what really matters, is what stood out the most.

I must have known that Middleton was no longer with us; it was confirmed for me tonight when I did an Internet search for his name. At first I was sad, but then I realized that Harry lives on through his books, as all great authors do.

Read this sometimes difficult book, not for its clear-eyed view of depression or its joyful praise for fly-fishing, but for a deeper understanding of the earth that we are fortunate live upon, and the cold, rushing, trout-filled rivers that Harry Middleton stood in as he connected with the the wild places that soothed his oft-times tortured soul.

Mr. Middleton is in a much darker period of his writing and life at the time of his writing this book and though he still writes well, the tone takes on a darker shade than The Earth is Enough or On the Spine of Time which are cherished pieces in my collection.