Russell Hill

GHOST TROUT is a series of narratives and essays that chronicle the search for the rare Humboldt cutthroat trout, and rivers and streams and their relationship to people and birds and dogs and the human condition. Pieces of the past are mingled with lives and deaths and a long-ago memory of a dance performed by the daughter of the California poet, Joaquin Miller. "It's an extraordinary piece of writing. I know nothing about fly fishing. Many of the landscapes are unfamiliar to me (though a few I recognize). Yet I found myself deeply immersed and captivated and moved. The beauty of the language, its restraint, the deep and plainspoken thought--it's almost like a book length poem, or a kind of koan. The people spring to life in startlingly few words. The image of your dying neighbor and his single light bulb stubbornly burning will stay with me forever. I'm so glad Hill] wrote it and so glad that I read it. I hope it finds its way into people's hands, because it deserves to be read." -Jesse Kellerman, novelist and playwright of Sunstroke, Trouble, The Genius, The Executor, Potboiler, and with his father, Jonathan Kellerman, The Golem of Hollywood." Ghost Trout is a wonderful book. It is poetic, but better than that the book is honest and the voice is trustworthy." -Louis Phillips, School of Visual Arts, New York City." What a splendid book I read it slowly, a little bit each night before I went to sleep. I think my dreams were the better for it." -Dick Doores, general contractor in Marin County

A hit and run driver pinwheeled his daughter's car into the waters of Tomales Bay and his life is turned upside down. Then the sheriff's detective tells him he may have found the driver, a rich man who lives nearby. Fueled by his anger and an overwhelming desire for revenge, he plots ways to make his daughter's killer suffer and die. Like the predatory egret, he stalks his victim, waiting for the right moment to strike. Drowning in the sea, rattlesnakes and crude bombs are parts of his obsessive pursuit, leading to the inevitable violence of what he imagines to be the final strike of the egret's sharp beak.

Fiction. California Interest. TOM HALL is one of those rare books which qualifies as a Young Adult novel as well as a challenging read for adults. In this coming-of-age work, twelve-year-old Tom Hall must accompany his sick father to a tuberculosis sanitarium in Arizona. The year is 1945, and Eddie, Tom's father, calls the magic mountain "a place where a bunch of men wait to die." Tom discovers the world of the Arizona back country, witnesses a savage beating of an American Indian friend, and comes to recognize the awful finality of a terminal illness. He and his father move to Los Angeles with Larry, Eddie's nurse from the sanitarium, and Tom encounters new experiences. He learns about beach life, about survival on the streets, about carnivals and horse races; he skips school and rides the electric streetcars, searching for meaning in a life that seems to be on hold, both frightening and exciting. The startling conclusion of this story will stay with the reader long after the final page is turned.

An aspiring young New York journalist is assigned by his editor at Life Magazine to travel to a small Alabama town-an assignment Richard Curtis resists with all his might-to look into the events surrounding the arrest and conviction of a county sheriff who was charged with aiding and abetting a mob of alleged members of the Ku Klux Klan in the flogging of several Negroes in the early 1950s. Elevating the story to national level is the suspicion that a conspiracy was carried out by some influential members of the little town, designed to rid the county of a sheriff who apparently had stepped on some toes in his efforts to clean up the corruption, a job which he was allegedly elected to perform. Encountering a citizenry that, not unexpectedly, is resentful of a seemingly biased Northern journalist coming to their town asking what they consider to be meddling questions, Richard soon finds himself in a predicament where he sees no way out. Fortunately, he meets a few people in the town who seem to want to befriend him, although primarily by suggesting that for his own well being he should get on the next bus heading North. What he did not expect to encounter were either of the two extremes: his life being threatened by those who with secrets they did not want revealed; and falling madly in love with a gorgeous girl from the little Southern town. Eventually returning to his job in New York, after learning the true story that he was assigned to uncover regarding a conspiracy, Richard is torn between doing his duty by publishing the story and keeping his job, or maintaining his personal honor and integrity by refusing to reveal the horrendous, unbelievable truth about what really happened, a revelation that he is convinced would devastate the lives of several townspeople, including many members of the family of the woman he has come to love. Through a strange sequence of events over the next several months, Richard returns to the little town, which he finally realizes, and admits to himself, that he likes. Soon, however, he becomes embroiled in another bizarre episode that puts him in what seems a no-win situation; yet, as sometimes happens, this series of unexpected events results in his finding his one true love, albeit not in the way he had expected or would ever dreamed possible. As the years pass, Richard becomes a respected citizen of the place where he was once reviled and distrusted by most, and where he once believed most of the people were ignorant, racial bigots. This heartwarming story parallels attitudes and events of the mid-twentieth century regarding racial biases and the Civil Rights movements, while at the same time providing a vehicle for clearing up many of the misunderstandings Northerners held about Southerners, and vice versa.