Harry Thurston’s eco-memoir Lost River is an elegiac meditation on the way that fishing, the rivers he has fished, and the people he has fished with have shaped his life. It is a story that encompasses both significant loss–of his childhood homestead, of rivers, and of the Atlantic salmon stocks, as well as of family and friends–and significant reward. Whether he’s recounting his experiences fishing his way down his native rivers and streams, reflecting on family bonds and writerly struggles, or recollecting the long work of establishing Nova Scotia’s Kelley River Wilderness Area, Thurston reminds us how fully the human and non-human worlds are interconnected, and of the great value of a life based in attentiveness and affection. Like a fish finally rising to the fly, the beauty and insight of Lost River elicit a bolt of excitement and hope. As one of Thurston’s mentors would say, “It’s good to know that we’re not fishing over barren water.”

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Harry Thurston is the author of several collections of poetry and twelve nonfiction books, including Tidal Life: A Natural History of the Bay of Fundy, winner of three non-fiction prizes in the Atlantic region; The Nature of Shorebirds: Nomads of the Wetlands; and A Place between the Tides: A Naturalist's Reflections on the Salt Marsh, which received the 2005 Sigrid Olson Nature Writing Award in the United States and was shortlisted for the 2005 BC Award for Canadian Non-Fiction. He has also written for such magazines as Audubon, Canadian Geographic, and National Geographic. Thurston lives in Nova Scotia.

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