Book: Trash Fish

Well, it’s about time. Bozeman author, poet, painter, musician, and English professor extraordinaire Greg Keeler has finally written a memoir about fishing, one of the main currents threading itself through his incredibly diverse and multifaceted life. Trash Fish (Counterpoint Press, $15) is a satirical collection of vignettes tracing Keeler’s fishing-obsessed life, from boyhood in Oklahoma, through post-graduate studies in Idaho, to his eventual settling in Montana. This is Keeler at his self-deprecating best: wry, witty, weird—and laugh-out-loud funny. But like much of Keeler’s work, that lightheartedness is merely the veneer, under which lies a deep (and occasionally dark) stratum of somber contemplation. Suffice it to say that this book is about much more than fishing, and you’ll get much more out of it than a few hearty chuckles.