David Nichols is a man who trusts reason above all else. A disciplined medical researcher, he has built his life on logic, restraint, and emotional distance. But when his older brother Larry survives a brutal battle with cancer, the fragile balance between them begins to shift. Larry, who endured months of treatment by tying intricate fishing flies and imagining Alaska’s wild rivers, is determined to take the wilderness journey he promised himself he would make if he lived. Reluctantly, David agrees to join him.

Deep in the remote Alaskan wilderness, surrounded by obsessive fly fishermen, volatile weather, and unforgiving waters, the brothers are forced into a closeness neither is prepared for. Old resentments surface as the trip unfolds, and David finds himself unexpectedly drawn to Kathy Sands, a psychologist quietly carrying the weight of her own loss after 9/11. As tensions build toward a strange and unforgettable night on the river, David must confront the emotional barriers he has spent his life constructing—and the possibility that healing may come from the most unlikely places.

Buy on Amazon Kindle | Audible | Paperback | Bookshop.org

About the Author

Lewis K. Schrager is an author and playwright whose short fiction has twice been honored in the F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Contest and has appeared in numerous literary journals, including South Carolina Review, Cottonwood, and Bryant Literary Review. His plays have been produced in Baltimore and St. Paul, and The Radical Radiance of the Fishing Fly is his first published novel. A graduate of Johns Hopkins University and the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Schrager has also spent much of his professional career in global health, serving as an HIV/AIDS researcher at the National Institutes of Health and as a vaccine developer focused on tuberculosis prevention. Visit Lewis at his website.