With its rugged forests and swift rivers, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula offers the perfect setting for fly-fishing. Following in the footsteps of Ernest Hemingway’s character Nick Adams, Bruce C. Petersen creates a unique coming-of-age memoir that departs from the typical story of growing from teen to adulthood. Instead, Petersen explores his seventh decade, chasing trout in the challenging waters of Northern Michigan while grappling with what it means to grow old. In this absorbing memoir, he relives his most memorable days as a fly-fisher and offers thoughtful reflections on the healing power of nature, aging gracefully, and the unstoppable passage of time. 

Bruce C. Petersen grew up in the Upper Peninsula in Marquette on the shores of Lake Superior. He received an undergraduate degree from Northern Michigan University and worked summers in the nearby iron-ore mines. He then earned a PhD from Harvard University. His teaching-research career began at Northwestern University, and he taught at Washington University, where he held a chaired professorship, until he retired in 2023. 

He began writing this, his first book, in 2014, at age sixty, completing a few chapters each year about the unfolding events in his seventh decade. These narratively connected stories, which are all linked by fly fishing, focus on the transformative power of nature, a nature-spiritual connection, and why immersion in nature is particularly beneficial to people coming of (old) age.