elve-year-old boy, who has grown up and grown old, quite old, and, while doing so, he has tried to avoid the challenging aspects of his generational origins, following years of a college education, by becoming a notable appellate lawyer, a magazine columnist, and a college professor, although not in an ad seriatim fashion, only to discover that he was defined by those origins and that he was standing on the shoulders of those who were part of them. It was a realization that did not come easily, but when it did, it occurred upon his return home to the mountainous regions of his childhood to assist his aged parents, who were dying, where, among the headwaters of the streams located there, he became a boy once again, with a fly rod in his hand, "together with a four-count rhythm and a hope that a big one might be there." Oh, yes, the family story is also a historic and philosophic tale about a lifetime of fishing... often for more than just a trout!