Blood Knot (reviewed)

Blood Knot
by Pete Fromm
The Lyons Press, 1998
Hardcover, 132 pages, $20
ISBN 1-55821-774-4

Mr. Fromm is a novelist who, thank fortune, has grown up fishing with the fly. On stream turns out to be a good venue for working through the complex relationships between husband and wife, parent and child, siblings, and even lovers. This collection of stories is meant to entertain. There is little question in my mind that in this collection the story that you read if you fish with the fly is measurably different in its meaning than the same words if read by the non-fisherman. Both may entertain but one is special so that only the fishers among us can share its enjoyment.
There are ten stories in this short volume. I liked the one called Stone best. A man who fished pools with a fly and a son who skipped smooth stones on flat water. The father tolerated skipping stones without realizing that eight skips required reading the water." He studied eddy lines and swirls, chop and break, anything that might upset the flight of his stone. Not holding water, not cover not feeding lanes." The walls of the hospital, where I have spent a working life and patients spend dreadful days, are papered with bad pastoral art frequently with a stream running through the picture. Bad art at least until I began to look for eddy lines and swirls, chop and break that define holding water, cover and feeding lanes.
Trout lies, as it turns out, are where you find them. These are good stories written for fishers. In the cold, grim winter ahead those of us who cannot take solace in Chile or the South Island of New Zealand may find a bit of it in these ten stories. Highly recommended. RWOL

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