Trout Love

Trout Love is the third and final novel in the gritty, fast-paced Eddy Trout Series. It is preceded by Trout Kill (2013) and Trout Run (2017) and, together, the three linked stories narrate Eddy's struggle to overcome his tragic past and discover a new, more loving heart. The Series takes place over the course of a few months in the late 1990s in rural Oregon. Eddy, 47, the father of two college-age girls, is a former Vietnam vet, bartender and logger. He's divorcing his wife, Beth, after more than twenty years of marriage. He's haunted by his war experiences, but more so by the memories of the sexual abuse he and his sister, Emily, 50, suffered as children at the hands of their Uncle Silas, who tried to pass himself off as their father. In their teens, Eddy and Emily murder Silas, drowning him in the Tyee River. Years later, they learn their real father is Pence Trout, an author who's adopted the pen name of Spencer Gatz. Spencer has written a tell-all memoir, Night Drives, that reveals to Eddy the many tragic aspects of their past: how their mother, Rose, died at the hands of an incompetent doctor; why Spencer abandoned them on the very day of Eddy's birth in 1950; and so much more. In Trout Love, the county sheriff suspects Eddy of, among other things, killing Spencer and burying him in Spencer's garden. Yes, Eddy may have wanted to kill his father, who's sick with cancer, but the disease beats him to the punch. When Eddy returns to Spencer's log-built hilltop home in rural Oregon, he wants to question Doris Henquist, Spencer's life-partner, about his father's past. Doris is sympathetic. Through her, Eddy learns that his father's will has left everything--the house, a well-equipped workshop, the garden, eighty wooded acres and an old rowboat--to him and Emily. But do they want any of it? Emily, who's now got a life of her own, does not. Eddy does not either, at least initially, but events eventually begin to change his mind. The rowboat, he discovers, is named Rose, after his mother. And then when he meets Felice Navarro, the homeless woman Doris has taken in, friendship blossoms. Felice, Eddy soon learns, has her own haunted past. She sings and plays the guitar, too, and Eddy, charmed, wants to learn how to strum and sing. Felice is an able teacher. Together, through music, friendship and growing intimacy, Eddy and Felice begin to heal their wounded hearts. In Trout Love, Eddy finds love.