Blood Knot by Pete Fromm (review)

BOOK REVIEW S 2 6 7 the genre to new tools of critical analysis: in this case, narrative theory and composition studies. Blood Knot. By Pete Fromm. New York: Lyons Press, 1998. 132 pages, $20.00. Reviewed by O. Alan Weltzien Western Montana College of the University of Montana Among the legion of newer Montana literary voices, Pete Fromm’s voice gains increasing distinction and recognition. Fromm’s first short story collection, The Tall Uncut (1992), announced a significant new talent in the Northern Rockies, a judgment sustained by the second and third collections, King of the Mountain (1994) and Dry Rain (1997). Meanwhile, Fromm pub­ lished a nonfiction memoir, Indian Creek Chronicles: A Winter Alone in the Wilderness (1993), which won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Book of the Year Award. Future publishing plans include a fifth short story collection and his first novel. Blood Knot includes seven new stories and three that he had published earlier in the previous collections. David James Duncan has labelled Fromm “the Chekhov of Great Falls,” and while the comparison seems prosaic or even comic, the flatter­ ing analogy with Chekhov describes some of the compactness and poi­ gnancy Fromm achieves. Blood Knot, though a slighter book than the earlier collections, is more ambitious, as the action in these stories takes place on water. All concern different fishing in different seasons—most, but not all, in Montana rivers or lakes. Thus, Fromm takes his place in the growing pis­ catory literature of the West. I judge it a secure place, one which the Norman Macleans and Richard Hugos, for example, would approve. With Fromm, fishing becomes not only an essential language of human relation­ ships but an expression of human frailty—and endurance. In most of the stories, Fromm, like many short story masters, casts into an emotional depth with a light but assured line. In the title story, a re­ cently divorced Montana dad drives to Georgia and fetches his son, Kenny; they fish in “Grandpa’s Creek,” accustoming themselves to a new stream and region and relationship. The narrator-dad ponders his failed marriage, the loss of his partner in fishing and in life, even as he feels reassured by his son’s interest in learning how to tie the knots his father has taught him. The second story, “The Net,” is a comically poignant story about a bride’s jitters. Immediately after their simple ceremony, she and her brand-new husband launch down the Snake River in Grand Tetons National Park, drift fishing. Fromm uses predictable analogies, including the title, confidently but not zealously. “Home before Dark,” the third story, plays with a loose variation on the prodigal son parable. The narrator and his adult stepson, Gordon, are canoe 2 6 8 W A L 3 4 ( 2 ) SUMMER 1 9 9 9 fishing; Gordon has been adrift for six years, out of touch with his step­ father, and has now returned with his bride. The narrator and Gordon’s day of fishing lengthens into a dark evening, but they reach their takeout spot safely. Having re-established some common ground, Gordon apologizes and confesses his fears of impending fatherhood. The book’s final story, “Mighty Mouse and Blue Cheese from the Moon,” first published in The Tall Uncut, combines elements of these previous two stories, as a young married couple, familiars on the Missouri River above Great Falls, lose a bit of their cus­ tomary levity as they face the change of becoming parents. Other stories deserve mention. One, “My Sister’s Hood,” proclaims the cockiness of high school seniors, while “For the Kid’s Sake” is a mostly comic vehicle in which a narrator who likes to curse assesses anew his fishing buddy who has brought his son along through some tough terrain. In “Trying to Be Normal,” a father and his two sons fish for paddlefish in eastern Montana, the older son struggling to absorb his mother’s death which has occurred about a year earlier. In “Grayfish,” two adult brothers fish for Arctic grayling in a high Montana lake; one, John, is deaf, and through their friendly competition Fromm offers a delicate but solid story of...