Travers Corners

This book is my favorite in a great series of books- The Travers Corners series. The characters walk off the pages. They are finely drawn, colorful, real, everyday people. The books help me keep a Montana State of Mind in my consciousness. The fishing, the tales, the warmth, the locale and the humor make this series an antidote to life in a large city. Just knowing that Travers Corners is there & I can pick up a book & experience it helps me enjoy the pleasures/pitfalls of life in L.A. Keep the stories coming.

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."

One enjoyable walk through a small Montana town. Fly fisher or not you will find, as we have, that you keep returning again and again.Jud (one of the main characters), his friends and neighbors have come to feel like personal friends. We are anxiously waiting for the next collection of stories to get to know them better!

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.

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.