Fishing the Jumps

"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