Chasing Rainbows…Tales of a Well-Traveled Fly Fisherman is a 62,000-word creative non-fiction memoir collection. It will appeal to those who value quality angling literature and will interest outdoor enthusiasts who may have crossed paths in some way with fly fishing, or who have thought about pursuing it, even admiring from afar. Chasing Rainbows would sit well at fireside with a copy of Norman MacLean’s A River Runs Through It, Thomas McGuane’s Driving on the Rim, or John Gierach’s A View From Rat Lake.

I am a descriptionist and a storyteller. My settings are both unusual and worldwide, and my stories are intriguing. Chapter One, “Hoppers Hoppers All About” is set on a hardscrabble West Texas ranch during an economically devastating grasshopper invasion and, in a change of scene, ends in a wildflower-filled Chilean river valley, showing glimpses of both a young and an adult narrator.

Another chapter, “Corregidor,” tells of a fishing trip Air Force medical officers, working at a casualty staging hospital in the Philippines, take during a battlefield lull in Vietnam. They momentarily escape an endless, senseless parade of wounded.  Amidst a diversionary fishing adventure, they visit the remote, historic, bombed-out island fortress and walk the route of World War II’s infamous Bataan Death March.  A horrific surprise unveils a Third World country’s most deeply held secret and plunges them back into reality.

“A Half Grain of Codeine” journeys to Hampshire England’s Test River and Winchester Cathedral to visit hallowed ground where modern fly fishing evolved. Circumstances propel our characters into the tension-filled aftermath of the assassination of Lord Mountbatten, British naval hero and India’s Governor General.

In route, the book moves to California’s Lost Coast and the Hupa Indian Reservation; to Southeast Asia, the American West, the ephemeral chalk streams of England, Generalissimo Franco’s Spain, Siberia, South America, Mexico, and California’s Gold Rush country. Readers will get a glimpse of peasant life, war-time anguish, verdant fields and mountains, gleaming white sand beaches, and historic Word War II battlefields entwined into stories pulled together by the common thread of fly fishing.

Chasing Rainbows is complete and has been written and professionally edited (Sharon Silva, Chronicle Books, Ten Speed Press) to better appeal to a broader outdoor-oriented, adventure-related market.