"Steve Duda, in River Songs: Moments of Wild Wonder in Fly Fishing , his first collection of essays, reminds us with attentive care to language and gloriously boisterous storytelling, why we keep coming back to rivers..." -- Flyfisherman Magazine "You won’t forget these stories. They’ll make you think about your relationship with fishing and perhaps make you look at it in a different way." -- Fly Culture Magazine "...this is the kind of writing--the kind of flyfishing writing, especially--that you simply will not find anywhere else, for the simple reason that no one can tell a story the way that Steve Duda tells a story." -- The Fly Fish Journal Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Winner in Nature Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards Finalist in Essays Banff Mountain Book Competition Finalist in Adventure Travel River Songs is rich with bracing, authentic, generous stories--writing that revels in language and spirit. Avoiding most of fly fishing’s clichés--the romantic elegies, the Moby-Dick-like conquests, the play-by-play detailing a "victory" over a fish-- Steve Duda instead offers pieces that breathe lived experience, reveal vulnerabilities, and convey a broad perspective of what it means to have "a long run with a tight crew." Duda is interested in what has been learned out there on the river: what is it about this "ridiculous activity" that connects us to this planet, makes us human, gives us hope? River Songs focuses on the in-between moments and the unexpected revelations--awe, fear, frustration, doubt, joy--that are as much a part of fishing as tying knots and chucking flies. Readers ride along with Duda in battered pickup trucks, fish "between jobs," look longingly at unfished famous rivers while touring with a country-punk band, and wonder how a fishing trip led to getting a tooth pulled while being surrounded by trash-talking friends. They will find beauty, discovery, heartbreak, good dogs, and the wonder of nature within the expanse of Northwest landscapes and beyond. Flyfishing is Steve Duda’s portal to the natural world. His stories are down-to-earth, passionate, and overflowing with wonder. River Songs is scorchingly well written. -- Peter Kaminsky ― author of Catch of a Lifetime Duda's tales are far more than fishing stories. They are the fatty spoils of in-between moments that only someone as unintentionally soaked in the cosmos as Duda could capture. I'm grateful for each of his experiences, in which he holds the fleeting, strange psalms long enough to translate them for mortals like me to cherish. -- Hilary Hutcheson ― outfitter and guide A wonderfully spirited case for one of the great and enduring sports. -- David Coggins ― author of The Believer: A Year in the Fly Fishing Life Like a fireside raconteur plucking his banjo beside your favorite stream, Steve Duda plays notes that ring true. ‘Here’s to ugly flies that are beautiful,’ he says, in remembrance of a long-lost fishing buddy, and we feel the joy and the pain. His river songs about the angling life―about living―evoke a deep yearning for connection, the regret of missed opportunity, and an impatience with cheap illumination. He finds humor, absurdity, and sorrow in both the magical and the mundane. Duda’s is a sometimes gruff, sometimes bemused, but always singular voice that cuts through the discordant noise of our times. -- Langdon Cook ― author of Upstream It would be easy to say that River Songs is simply a very good book about fly fishing. But it’s elevated to something more because Steve Duda has his sights on bigger game, namely the passage of time, and its intimate twin, mortality. More specifically, how we choose to spend the former, given the inevitability of the latter. The author’s choice is on the water with fly rod in hand, and, fortunately for us, at his keyboard. Duda writes with ferocious honesty and breathtaking intensity. The stories here are a lot like the author himself―authentic, soulful, earthy, and, beneath a sometimes-crusty exterior, filled with love. There are sweet melodies in River Songs , to be sure, but it’s the slightly subversive, punk-rock ethic that lends satisfying grit to all that beauty. This is a book that helps us keep time through a life of fly fishing, and more importantly, what to make of it. -- Dylan Tomine ― author of Headwaters and Closer to the Ground Reading River Songs broke my heart. It may have been the list of a hundred smells, in alphabetical order, a lifelong fisher is born to―starting with armpit and galloping through dog breath and fryer grease to river mist and wool. It’s not that I will never have the years to fish the rivers and salt this man has fished―from the bone flats in the Bahamas and Belize to the cold streams of Patagonia, Oregon, Montana, B.C.―or learn to read the water, the wind, the season, the trout, as he does; or get to free a swallow from a tiny caddis fly, or swap outlandish stories over cups of Argenti