Trout Love

<p>Trout Love is the third and final novel in the gritty fast-paced Eddy Trout Series. It is preceded by Trout Kill (2013) and Trout Run (2017) and together the three linked stories narrate Eddy's struggle to overcome his tragic past and discover a new more loving heart. The Series takes place over the course of a few months in the late 1990s in rural Oregon. Eddy 47 the father of two college-age girls is a former Vietnam vet bartender and logger. He's divorcing his wife Beth after more than twenty years of marriage. He's haunted by his war experiences but more so by the memories of the sexual abuse he and his sister Emily 50 suffered as children at the hands of their Uncle Silas who tried to pass himself off as their father. In their teens Eddy and Emily murder Silas drowning him in the Tyee River. Years later they learn their real father is Pence Trout an author who's adopted the pen name of Spencer Gatz. Spencer has written a tell-all memoir Night Drives that reveals to Eddy the many tragic aspects of their past: how their mother Rose died at the hands of an incompetent doctor; why Spencer abandoned them on the very day of Eddy's birth in 1950; and so much more. In Trout Love the county sheriff suspects Eddy of among other things killing Spencer and burying him in Spencer's garden. Yes Eddy may have wanted to kill his father who's sick with cancer but the disease beats him to the punch. When Eddy returns to Spencer's log-built hilltop home in rural Oregon he wants to question Doris Henquist Spencer's life-partner about his father's past. Doris is sympathetic. Through her Eddy learns that his father's will has left everything--the house a well-equipped workshop the garden eighty wooded acres and an old rowboat--to him and Emily. But do they want any of it? Emily who's now got a life of her own does not. Eddy does not either at least initially but events eventually begin to change his mind. The rowboat he discovers is named Rose after his mother. And then when he meets Felice Navarro the homeless woman Doris has taken in friendship blossoms. Felice Eddy soon learns has her own haunted past. She sings and plays the guitar too and Eddy charmed wants to learn how to strum and sing. Felice is an able teacher. Together through music friendship and growing intimacy Eddy and Felice begin to heal their wounded hearts. In Trout Love Eddy finds love.</p>