"Herrin's writing is vivid, lyrical, and intense. But the glory of this novel is Herrin's gift for recreating a particular time and place, the decades after WWII, the exuberance of summers by the mountain lake, the brilliance of Little Howie Whalen building a textile empire. These characters, and this time, come alive in a way that haunts the reader."—Robert Morgan, author of
Gap Creek"This is a wonderful novel! Herrin's writing is beautifully expressed, perceptive, emotionally subtle, and at times cunningly enigmatic. Every time I read him, I am struck anew that, purely as a writer—an artist using words—he's one of the very best we have."—Brian Hall, author of I Should Be Extremely Happy in Your Company: A Novel of Lewis and Clark
"Lamar Herrin's Fishing the Jumps is surely unique as a novel. Told mostly in the vividly reminiscent voice of Jim, it flows outward, inward, and round about as it chronicles the stories of the Pritchards and Whalens, the Coggins and even the toad, Oldham. Seemingly leisurely, the narrative is insistent, ruefully ironic, and utterly absorbing. When I finished reading, I felt a little lonesome; the story and I had become close friends."—Fred Chappell, former poet laurete of North Carolina and author of A Way of Happening: Observations of Contemporary Poetry
"An accomplished storyteller with a hypnotic voice that draws you in and carries you along."—Matt Ruff, author of Lovecraft Country
"Lamar Herrin's novel is deliberate and gorgeous, with a mastery of description and a searing command of American culture. Fishing the Jumps is quiet, thoughtfully told, but with a thrashing undercurrent, like the turmoil of some largemouth bass about to break into a feeding frenzy—"the jumps." This is literally the tension of the story, its powerful force. What seems almost a low-key dialogue on a placid lake is actually a turbulent family history that refuses to sink to the bottom of memory. This makes an elegant structure for a fish story that plumbs the nature of storytelling itself. It is a thrilling, intense novel to read. I was hooked."—Bobbie Ann Mason, author of Patchwork and The Girl in the Blue Beret: A Novel
"Herrin's lyrical style paints a vivid picture of his characters' surroundings as he describes a lonely loon calling out over the lank, the crescent moon's sliver of light glinting off the water or a neighbor's nightly 5 o'clock cello concert from a nearby dock. Readers almost hear the lap of the water and feel as though they've been invited to pull up a chair, listen in on the conversation and savor every moment."—Penny Woods, Kentucky Living, October 2019
"Lamar Herrin may be the best writer of whom you have never heard... there's no denying that Fishing the Jumps is a work of genius... Herrin's narrative style is seamless, his emotional intelligence expert.... [A] bildungsroman, a mystery, and a prose poem, too, in its lush, layered honesty, verbal ingenuity, and elegant humanity."—Linda Elisabeth LaPinta, Kentucky Humanities
"One should not read Lamar Herrin's Fishing the Jumps in a single sitting. Though slim and inviting, the novel requires a patient reader—one who can appreciate Herrin's careful attention to the art of storytelling. . . The novel's frame emphasizes the performative nature of good storytelling."—Journal of Appalachian Studies
