River of the Angry Moon - Seasons on the Bella Coola. By Mark Hume with Harvey Thommasen. Greystone Books and University of Washington Press. $21.95 in hardcover, $15.95 soft cover.

From the critics:

"This is the finest book I have ever read about a salmon and steelhead river." - Frank Amato, Salmon Trout Steelheader magazine.

"A powerful important book." - Joel Connelly, Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"Commands attention. . .through the sheer grace of its language." - Barbara McMichael, Tacoma News Tribune.

"Powerful . . . the book is one for the ages." - Neil Cameron, BC Outdoors.

"Anyone who likes to fish. . .or just go exploring on the West Coast should read this book. . .it will give them some real joy." - Sid Marty, National Post.

"It carries the spirit of the coast straight into your heart." - Gene Woodwick, The North Coast News.

"The sheer power of River of the Angry Moon. . .is phenomenal." - Angela Hall, Coast Mountain News.

"An incredible book." - Ross Purnell, Virtual Flyshop.

From the Prologue:

This book was born on the banks of the Bella Coola River. For several years, Harvey Thommasen had been researching the natural history of the valley where he’d come to live and to work as a family physician. The catalog of information he’d compiled was staggering. He’d captured and identified hundreds of aquatic insects, memorized sound tapes so that he could recognize birds by their songs, done clinical studies on Native medicinal plants and taken time on his rounds to question elders about the way things had been. He turned river stones, collected mushrooms, pored over scientific papers, compiled detailed field notes and stood for countless hours in the rain watching birds. And of course he spent a lot of time fishing, going out to the river even in the worst weather to see how nature was unfolding - and to try to catch steelhead.

Our friendship, and my curiosity about this great watershed, drew me to the Bella Coola River. As we swam, fly-fished, kayaked, waded and hiked the Bella Coola and Atnarko Rivers, from the headwaters to the estuary, we talked about ways to best tell the story of this verdant coastal valley. We did not want to write just about fishing - although fish and the river were at the heart of it all - but instead sought to convey the complexity of a temperate rain forest ecosystem of which this river, and others like it, are an integral part. We eventually fixed on the Native calender of the moons, which in turn is linked to the salmon, to guide us through the forest and into the river.

After the book was started, the Bella Coola was closed to steelhead fishing because stocks had become endangered. So this is a story about loss, about human imperative, about greed and shortsightedness as much as it is about the changing seasons an angler experiences on a wild and beautiful river. Nature is resilient and salmon are incredibly fecund. The waters should abound with fish. When they do not it is a sign of terrible mismanagement, not by fisheries bureaucrats, but by society as a whole. We believe that a new paradigm is needed on the Pacific coast, one that recognizes the intricate complexity of the rainforest and that limits the excessive killing of salmon so that stocks might recover.

Harvey compiled the research data that is the basis of this book and he provided detailed field notes of his experiences. I did the writing, based on my own trips to the Bella Coola, and on a lifetime of fishing and wading other coastal rivers in British Columbia. This is not an account of one year on one river, nor is it a story of one angler’s observations. At times I saw the river through Harvey’s eyes; at times I drew on my memories of rivers that once were as wild, and of the fish that swam in them. The descriptions of light passing through the forest, of the scent of spring, of the breath of a wolf and the sensation of feeling a fish dying in my hands, are drawn not from Harvey’s careful scientific notes, but from my own recurring dreams of rivers. When the manuscript was complete, I honed it, compressed it and polished it, debating the results and conclusions with Harvey. We have strived throughout to produce a book that accurately reflects the passing of the seasons and that captures the mystical experience of fishing a river in the heart of a temperate rainforest. In the end, not certain we could ever finish such a monumental task, we released it with a mixed sense of loss and accomplishment.

We would like to thank Rob Sanders, at Greystone Books, for his enthusiastic support, based on reading a few draft chapters and Nancy Flight for her sensitive editing. Carol Thommasen, Al Purkiss and the late Miguel Moreno, provided invaluable critical comment and Russ Hilland assisted with data, for which we are grateful.

- Mark Hume