Review: Backcast: Fatherhood Fly Fishing And A River Journey Through The Heart Of Alaska
1075 Words5 Pages
A cop carried me out the house and put me in the back of the police car with a teddy bear, he told me they were taking my mother to get help. Once I learned the truth I promised myself that my children would never experience that pain I did as a child. Childhood experiences shape ones future self. Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly-fishing and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska by Lou Ureneck is a story of a father’s desperate attempt to save what he assumes is a torn relationship with his son after his divorce from his wife of twenty years. Lou and his son traveled to Alaska on an ill prepared fishing trip. This memoir is also a reflection of Lou’s dysfunctional childhood and how it subconsciously molds his decisions as an adult. Several of Lou’s experiences with adults as a child induced his fear of divorce, quest for stability, sense of family and success. The fear that he faced during his impending divorce was caused by his mother’s two divorces. Children of a divorce have a “fear of repeating his or her parents’ failure…” (Matthews pg. 4) and this is what Lou was trying to prevent from happening to his children. Ureneck claims, “The core of my anxiety was the conviction…show more content… Ureneck writes, “The loss of the trip made me realize something: We were stuck in place… I imagined myself in college”, (132). Lou chooses to pursue college once he experienced the down falls of poverty. Lou focused on college. Although Lou graduated college, he also wanted more out of life just like his mom, hence the reason he strived for more whether it was the fellowship at Harvard or his position as editor in chief. The poverty Lou was faced with as a child was jolting him towards the need for continued success. “Achievement was my insurance policy against a slide into the past I was trying to put behind me,” (183) says Ureneck. The poverty of his childhood was the push for Lou to continue the pursuit of