This chronicle about a river and river people is a cross between Cannery Row and Huckleberry Finn. Rivers have been magnets for young boys who as grown men never lose their love of them. Young Martin Quigley had an uncle, an expert boatman and fisherman, who reared him and introduced him to trout and salmon angling, and to life, in their backyard river, the Suir (Waterford and Tipperary). This memoir is about one idyllic Irish summer in 1961 when eleven-year old Martin finds happiness, but it's laced with sadness and despair. This is a world of rogues and poachers, mavericks and bailiffs: two rascals who would kill for a feed of eels: three brothers who loved the river and thought they knew it all; Harry, who abandoned fishing because of ghostly visions; and Dalt, an outstanding angler always fighting against the drink.
