My Story As Told By Water

Confessions, Druidic rants, reflections, bird-watchings, fish-stalkings, visions, songs and prayers refracting light, from living rivers, in the age of the industrial dark.

The twenty-two essays in this collection swirl and eddy around the author's early-forged bond with the rivers of the Pacific Northwest and their endangered native salmon. With a bracing blend of story, logic, science, and humor, Duncan relates mystical, life-changing fishing adventures; draws incisive portraits of the humans and wild creatures who shaped his destiny; attacks the corporate greed and political folly that have brought whole ecosystems to ruin; and meditates on the spiritual and practical necessity of acknowledging our dependence on water in its primal state.

The Sierra Club is proud to announce that My Story As Told By Water has been nominated as a 2001 finalist in the Nonfiction category for the prestigious National Book Awards. Read the Sierra Club's news release on this topic (November 5, 2001).

WHAT THE EXPERTS ARE SAYING:
"There's an engaging coherence to Duncan's 22 angry, heartbroken, yet hopeful and often quite comic nature essays. . . . Sounding a clarion call to conservation activism, Duncan eloquently explains why clean, free running water matters: just as we die without good water, so does the earth. Yet his unabashed polemic is nicely cushioned by rhapsody; he's the ranter as poet."
--Publishers Weekly

"Refreshing as a glass of cold water on a scorching day. . . . Duncan invites, includes, intrigues, and inculcates his readers so that they will never think of the Pacific Northwest, salmon, Montana, or Nevada gold mines as they did before."
--Library Journal

"This book is the Desert Solitaire of water." --Jim Harrison

"Original, skillful, and funny as hell." --Ian Frazier

"My Story as told by Water is the real McCoy, vivid and important, full of urgent news about living on earth."
--Thomas McGuane