River Songs

"Steve Duda, in River Songs: Moments of Wild Wonder in Fly Fishing, his first collection of essays, reminds us with attentive care to language and gloriously boisterous storytelling, why we keep coming back to rivers..." -- Flyfisherman Magazine

"You won’t forget these stories. They’ll make you think about your relationship with fishing and perhaps make you look at it in a different way." -- Fly Culture Magazine

"...this is the kind of writing--the kind of flyfishing writing, especially―that you simply will not find anywhere else, for the simple reason that no one can tell a story the way that Steve Duda tells a story." -- The Fly Fish Journal

Independent Publisher Book Award Winner
Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist

River Songs is rich with bracing, authentic, generous stories--writing that revels in language and spirit. Avoiding most of fly fishing’s clichés--the romantic elegies, the Moby-Dick-like conquests, the play-by-play detailing a "victory" over a fish-- Steve Duda instead offers pieces that breathe lived experience, reveal vulnerabilities, and convey a broad perspective of what it means to have "a long run with a tight crew." Duda is interested in what has been learned out there on the river: what is it about this "ridiculous activity" that connects us to this planet, makes us human, gives us hope?

River Songs focuses on the in-between moments and the unexpected revelations--awe, fear, frustration, doubt, joy--that are as much a part of fishing as tying knots and chucking flies. Readers ride along with Duda in battered pickup trucks, fish "between jobs," look longingly at unfished famous rivers while touring with a country-punk band, and wonder how a fishing trip led to getting a tooth pulled while being surrounded by trash-talking friends. They will find beauty, discovery, heartbreak, good dogs, and the wonder of nature within the expanse of Northwest landscapes and beyond.