This is not a fishing book. It is a book in which the author uses a fly fishing trip to Alaska as a vehicle into deep personal introspection. In his writing, the author Lou Ureneck references a quote from Socrates that, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” These pages represent an examined life.

Ureneck invites us along on his recollection of an Alaskan fly-fishing trip with his son on the heels of divorce, and of confronting the damage done to this relationship through his failures. From there he delves into his own upbringing, trying to find meaning in his past, and how it brought him to this point, sharing a leaky tent in miserably cold rain in the Alaskan wilderness with a son who resents him.

Because Backcast is so well-written, it is easy to invest in the story and its characters, who are, after all, real people. While Ureneck uses fly fishing as the conduit to his story, he does not fall into the trap of turning his angling experiences into contrived metaphors for life or fathers and sons. This book is much better than that.

As for the fishing writing…The passages about the trip down the Kanektok River are crisp and descriptive, bringing to life the river, the rain, the flora, and the salmon. And the bears. If you’re looking for concrete life lessons, there is an immediate one: Don’t go into brown bear country and misplace your gun.