Return to Travers Corners: Stories [Hardcover]

Scott Waldie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 2002

The sequel collection from the author of the highly praised Travers Corners. (SEE QUOTE.)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Waldie once again celebrates the simple pleasures of rural Montana, returning to the fictional town he depicted in his debut short story collection (Travers Corners) for another set of cozy tales. Travers Corners is a one-street burg with a handful of stores and a 360-degree panorama of spectacular scenery, where fly fishermen and travelers regularly mix it up with the locals. "It Ain't Over till the Fat Man Sings" follows Jud, a craftsman and river guide, who sees his romantic fortunes briefly improve in midlife when he meets a sweet, sexy Wall Street CEO who entices him into a one-night stand during her short visit. Jud fades into the background in "Invisible," which chronicles the arrival of the village's first African-American resident, who quietly integrates the town by building a small but very successful furniture factory. A somewhat more sentimental effort is "Your Name in Lights," a modern parable about a famous actress who is stranded in Travers Corners after a car accident. She finds herself doing a lot of thinking about her priorities when she's exposed to the openhearted generosity of the town's denizens, who rescue her wounded dog and shelter her from the paparazzi. Waldie reprises the friendly, optimistic narration of his first collection. Sometimes he crosses the line from folksy wisdom into treacly homilies, but on the whole this well-crafted sequel more than measures up to the standards set by its predecessor.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

As if the Montana tourist board needed any more assistance in luring out-of-state visitors, along comes Waldie with his second helping of rhapsodic, resplendent reflections on the idyllic, albeit entirely imaginary, burg of Travers Corners. In this much-anticipated sequel to his 1997 short story collection, Waldie reacquaints us with its downtown (and the term is used advisedly) denizens and country curmudgeons, chief among them Judson C. Clark, boat builder extraordinaire. An acute judge of character and perceptive student of human nature, Clark is quick to size up interlopers and resident-wanna-bes, usually while standing hip deep in Carrie Creek, fly rod in hand. Immediately entertaining for those to whom fly-fishing is synonymous with religion, Waldie's stories are equally appealing to anyone whose only fishing experience involves the Mrs. Paul's section of the grocery freezer. Through Clark's eyes, we observe the glory and tranquility of nature, the nature and mystery of friendship, and the friendly idiosyncrasies of small-town living. As Clark puts it, "If this isn't vana, it's near vana." Puns abound; treasures await. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: The Lyons Press; 1st edition (November 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585746622
• ISBN-13: 978-1585746620
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,471,064 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Poor Scott Waldie, October 10, 2004

By 

M. Beltramo (Big Sky, MT) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Return to Travers Corners: Stories (Hardcover)

Poor Scott Waldie. He is one of the gifted writers of our time but he has been relegated to the backwater of fly fishing stories. Not a huge potential audience there. Especially, not a large feminine audience (i.e., the ones who actually buy books). Furthermore, he doesn't compete well with Gerach and Holt in terms of, "and then I caught a 26 inch brown but Jack caught a 27 inch rainbow," which appeal to the guys who buy these books.

BUT

Waldie is alone in being able to weave together stories about a semi-fictional town with its visitors, part-timers, and residents that truly capture the good and bad about the popularization of the Northwest.

His stories would lose no relevance if he would write them using tennis, polo, or canasta as the common thread because they are really about people and how they interact. They expose the good and the bad and how they intersect in a delightful and thoughtful manner and in the process his writing flows with more memorable lines than you can count.

Hopefully, he will soon find an agent or publisher who will market him for the gifted writer that he is, rather than pushing him into an eddy that he cannot row out of (pardon the dangling participle).

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars return to travers corners, December 13, 2002

By 

James Pappenfus (Concord, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Return to Travers Corners: Stories (Hardcover)

the book being short stories I can pick it up and read a great tale before going to bed. The charactors in this book are so real you can't help but love them!

5.0 out of 5 stars One of these stories will move you, April 9, 2008

By 

Knud A. Hermansen - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Return to Travers Corners: Stories (Hardcover)

I discovered Scott Waldie from a fly shop owner in Nashville one Saturday when I stepped in to buy some flies. He told me that Travers Corners was one of the best book that he'd ever read. Then he told me that Return to Travers Corners was even better. I was skeptical because Travers Corners was amazing. The second book in this series lives up to the first and surpasses it in some ways.

It is not a series of fishing essays that only an angler would pick up but a series of deeply moving stories about small town life in rural Montana. The stories are loosely based on a real town and people. However, fly fishing and the laid-back philosophy that often accompanies it find their way into every story in an unobtrusive way. One of them will move any reader, regardless of his or her feelings on fishing.

This book reads quick and if you want to read it, you should get all three of Scott Waldie's books because you want to read them one after the other.