If you are a father, buy and read this book. If your father is alive and can read, buy him this book

In Casting Lines, Orval Lund explores small-town secrets (his own, as well as those of his relatives and neighbors) of the upper Midwest. He does so in poems which eloquently convey the paradox of a life where one is simultaneously embraced and misunderstood, where continuous intimacy can lead to alienation (in this respect, Lund's poems sometimes remind one of Sherwood Anderson, whose Winesburg, Ohio exposed the loneliness and mystery of the American village). Whether Lund is speaking of his adolescence among Scandinavian and Polish immigrant farmers, or musing on the pangs of middle-aged love and fatherhood, or whether he is simply evoking the woods and streams to which he resorts when town life presses in on him, Lund has a sharp eye for incident and an ear finely attuned to the beauty of common speech. Lund's gift for story-telling makes his book accessible, yet a formal intelligence undergirds his casual tone-with the result that these poems are often as sly and muscular as the trout he loves to write about.

Don't let the title's reference to fishing and writing fool you: this book of poems has everything. Family stories sing here, along with poems of worthy praise, for the American landscape and the wilderness found in human nature. New Rivers did well in selecting Lund's book as a Minnesota Voices Project winner. A nurturing and delightful journey of a read!