Recovering from breast cancer and reeling from her husband’s infidelity, Mia Landan flees her Charleston home to heal in the mountains near Asheville, North Carolina. She seeks refuge in a neglected fishing cabin belonging to her fly-fishing instructor, Belle Carson, who inherited the cabin, which once belonged to a grandmother she never knew — the legendary fly fisher and journalist of the 1920s, Kate Watkins, whose life fell into ruins after she was accused of murdering her lover.

While using the cabin as her summer sanctuary, Mia discovers Watkins’ journal. The inspiring words written by the woman she never knew finally lure Mia from her shell to connect once more with the world around her. As she learns to fish, she uncovers secrets that span generations–secrets that have the power to change no only her life, but the lives of those in her new community.

Finalist, 2009 SIBA Book Award by the Southeastern Independent Booksellers Association

“Told partly in narrative and partly through well researched historical diaries and letters, this is a very powerful story of forgiveness, redemption and new birth. Vitality flows through this book just a surely as the river flows next to the cabin. Any woman who believes–or least longs TO believe–in second chances should read this book.”
— Jackie Blem, Tattered Cover Book Store

“[An] exquisite, many-layered novel.”
— Booklist

“Monroe delivers another novel of strong Southern women.”
–Publisher’s Weekly

“This fascinating, nicely wrought novel will be popular in public libraries even where readers don’t know a brook trout from a can of sardines. Highly recommended.”
– Library Journal