Amazon.com Review
When the author discovers suspicious lumps on his 11-year-old golden retriever Nellie, rather than wait for a biopsy and the possibility of further decline, he decides it's time for one last great road trip. "I knew, lying next to her, that I was frightened for myself at least as much as for Nellie. I needed the steadiness of her demands, the consistency she brought to my life. I couldn't imagine days without her. So that night in bed I stayed close to her and whispered in her ear that she was a good girl, a Frisbee catcher, a lake swimmer." Whether or not the lumps are cancerous, the dog that saw him through a marriage and a divorce has gotten old. So they pack up the truck and make for points west. What transpires next is part elegy, part meditation on interspecies companionship, and part fishing memoir. Monninger writes lyrically about his bond with an animal and the landscape while staying true to the picaresque form in a casual manner that allows minor surprises along the way to gain cumulative power. Here he is describing the gift bestowed by a bend in the river after following Nellie's lead:
Trout rose everywhere I looked.... I could not believe my good fortune. As I stood quietly and listened, I heard the gurgle of water passing over rocks, the sound snapped to life by the quick surge of trout.... The rings of their feeding drifted above them, then disappeared in the water's pull. I remembered André Gide's line: "Fish die belly-up and rise to the surface; it's their way of falling."
Friendship, mortality, loneliness, the redemptive qualities of nature--this is the territory the author drives through with his faithful canine, a territory that will appeal to dog lovers and fly-fishers alike.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Monninger's touching account of fishing and hiking in the company of his beloved Nellie, an 11-year-old golden retriever whom he suspected of having cancer, is both a fly-fisher's engaging daybook and a wonderfully affecting probe of the humanApet bond. Nellie, as it turned out, was cancer-free. But, after the vet removed 17 lumps, Monninger, a prolific New Hampshire novelist (Mather, etc.), refused to have them biopsied, reasoning that he wasn't going to authorize extensive surgery if they proved malignant. Instead, as his way of repaying Nellie for her lifelong fidelity, he decided to take her on one last jaunt to some of their favorite haunts, including Montana's Crow Reservation, where he had spent a summer. Nellie, oblivious to any presumed health problems, contentedly watches bison at Yellowstone National Park, chases a coyote and, in Wyoming, falls head over heels for a male Chesapeake retriever named Chunky. Monninger's own adventures include getting into a leg-wrestling match in a small-town Idaho bar with Kathy, the local leg-wrestling champion. As he parcels out his lessons about unselfish commitment, Monninger keeps in mind that his relationships with people haven't always been as harmonious as his relationship with Nellie. In the end, man and dog return to New Hampshire, moving into a new home, a converted barn built around 1840, along with Monninger's new companion, Wendy, and her eight-year-old son. Monninger's writing sticks so close to the immediacy of experience that his book manages, somewhat amazingly, to avoid sentimentality. Agent, Jennifer Hengen at Sterling-Lord Literistic. (June)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
