Travers Corners: Classic Stories about Fly Fishing and a Small Montana Town [Paperback]

Scott Waldie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2003

"This charming debut collection of stories. Waldie builds his tales around character, creating a small community of homespun folk who are quintessentially American and just a bit eccentric." -- Publishers Weekly

"This wonderful collection of Montana short stories made me want to drop everything and light out for Big Sky Country and never look back. TRAVERS CORNERS is a terrific debut by a gifted writer, who gets the contemporary American West just exactly right on every page."
--Howard Frank Mosher

"The book has a little of the feel of The Last Picture Show. Waldie also manages a paradox, demonstrating that the decent, more-or-less ordinary people in this pretty nice place live lives of consequence, knit one to another by community, history, affection, or animus. They matter."
--Fly Rod &Reel

"Visit TRAVERS CORNERS for a good read; it's a town full of people worth knowing."
--EXPO Book Review, 1998

"...a lovely, tongue-in-cheek look at make-believe small-town America."
--Arizona Daily Star

"Like the characters he writes about, Waldie's pace is slow and deliberate, and he demonstrates why the journey is the destination. He leads the way to a tiny corner of the world where we can refresh ourselves and still make it home for dinner. Travers Corner is just such a place."
--Woodland Hills Daily News (LA--circulation 118,495)

"A shrewd eye for rural characters, the book may remind some readers of Winesburg, Ohio, Lake Wobegon Days, or A River Runs Through It."
--Billings, MT, Gazette

"Scott Waldie has captured the essence of a small Montana town and the characters who 0live there. Written with warmth and wit, these stores will make you long for a second home like Travers Corners."
--Montana Outdoors

"Best of all, the warmth isn't sappy and the wit isn't just tinsel. Both are generated from a generous understanding of human nature."
--Montana magazine

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

The title locale is a small Montana town near the picturesque Elkheart Mountains and Carrie Creek, a flyfisher's paradise. It's the fictional setting for nine engaging stories graced by witty homespun characters. Jud Clark, a boat builder and fishing guide, is the central figure who interacts with the other townsfolk and tourists seeking his angling services. Other remarkable characters include a septuagenarian anthropologist fishing from a boat through some fierce rapids, a likable misfit named Quintin who catches a big trout using a cane pole for a rod, and a Bentley-driving Brit who shows up in the last chapter and provides an ancestral link for several residents. Recommend, especially for Montana public libraries.?Will Hepfer, SUNY at Buffalo Libs.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Take equal portions of Lake Wobegon Days and Winesburg, Ohio, add a dash of A River Runs through It, and you have Waldie's wonderfully entertaining stories about Travers Corners, Montana, which exists only on these pages but, while you read, at least, is a real place with real people, such as Herbert Hoover and John Steinbeck, both of whom visit. A tie that binds the stories together is fly-fishing for trout in nearby rivers and creeks, which all the main characters frequently do, so that readers who happily suffer from fishing fever well may be enthralled and, when they discover there are only about 50 pages left, feel let down when they realize the book and the place are soon to expire. Lots of nonfishers will probably feel the same, for like the mythical Elkheart River that runs through Travers Corners, these stories could and should flow on forever. Jon Kartman --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: The Lyons Press; 1st edition (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1592281540
• ISBN-13: 978-1592281541
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,132,555 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brevity is the soul of wit., January 13, 2003

By 

Robert C. Spidle (Richmond, VA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Travers Corners: Classic Stories About Fly Fishing and a Small Montana Town (Hardcover)

I should preface this by saying the I come from a line of fly-fisherman - my father with whom I have fly fished many times, my grandfather with whom I was never given the opportunity to fly fish, and so on down the line.
I received this book from my father two years ago as a Christmas present. He had read only months previously and I had heard him speak only a few hushed words about it. If you know my father that means that the subject of those words is something worthy of respect and reverence.
I was then not long out of college and trying to find my way in the world - success, fame, and all the trappings. Something had been lost to be while I was in school desperately studying to be the next whomever. Anyhow, I remember very distinctly opening the book and reading those first few words. Forgive the unintended pun, but I was hooked.
There were times when Mr. Waldie's simple descriptions of the landscape and the riverscape brought chills to my body. I have been to such places only in my dreams, but now I felt I was somehow closer. And then came the difficult stories, told with such a delicate and tender touch that a lesser author would have utterly failed to grasp. Like a fine cast upriver and into the crook of a teetering sycamore, there's a certain nuance that can't be taught and can't be learned just done. I am not afraid to say that I can think of a few times that I sat alone in my apartment and carefully laid the book down after a story and stood up for a mug of tea. And it was the dust in the apartment that made my eyes water, I'm sure. And that tightness in my throat - the kind that makes your chest ache - that had to be a cold coming on, of course. And other times, my laughing not only made my cat bounce recklessly from wall to wall, but I am pretty sure the newborn in the apartment beneath me woke up. The point being is this: Mr. Waldie had looked me in the eye and asked me a very pointed and loaded question just six words long: When's the last time you fished?
Things started looking up the next weekend when I was in the mountains of North Carolina, rod in hand.
I just laid the book down, finished, for the fifth time and felt that others should be shown this amazing wonder of comfortable honest stories from a small town. I don't know how else to persuade a reader to pick this collection of stories up other than to quote what my father inscribed on the title page:

"Rob- I think that this book will always serve as a gentle reminder that good and decent do count."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Travers Corners, March 19, 2000

By 

Rich Witman (Lynden, Wa.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Travers Corners: Classic Stories About Fly Fishing and a Small Montana Town (Hardcover)

I found this a wonderful book that relates well to so many things in life, both past and present. You can identify with the characters as to the times you may have done similiar things yourself. Very entertaining, one minute you may be laughing yourself silly and then two pages later crying tears of sadness.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Relaxing, warm hearted reading, October 6, 1998

By 

cbostick9 (Florida, U.S.A.) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Travers Corners: Classic Stories About Fly Fishing and a Small Montana Town (Hardcover)

This book seems to be written for the fishermen but it will appeal at a much broader level, though there is much to catch the interest and heart of those dedicated to the art of fly fishing. Each chapter is a seperate special little nugget involving those that enter the lives of the characters that frame and fill out all of the stories. You may laugh outloud at some parts and shed a tear at others but it is a story that will appeal to both men and women.