A heartfelt memoir of three generations of fathers and sons who connect through their shared love of fly-fishing.

On the South Branch of the Raritan River in New Jersey, Bill Plummer casts his line in the hope that fly-fishing might fortify him in the face of a failed marriage, the death of his father, and a faltering career. Inspired by the discovery of his father's fly-fishing diary, Bill sets out to understand his father's curious allegiance to the sport and uses the diary as a point of access to what he thought was a distant and enigmatic man. As he comes to delight in the peculiar pleasures of his father's favorite pastime, he finds in it an approach to his son and the strength for a second marriage.

Wishing My Father Well is a moving intergenerational memoir in the spirit of James Prosek's Joe and Me and James Dodson's Faithful Travelers that passes down the wisdom of a silent father--an unprepossessing man who was "closer to nature than the rest of us"--and opens our eyes to fly-fishing's seductive power to unite people in a shared appreciation of the majesty and serenity of nature. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.