Luther Corhern's Salmon Camp Chronicles

Matt Hartman is a freelance editor and cataloguer, running Hartman Cataloguing, Editing and Indexing Services.

What a pleasure it is to return, with Curtis as our guide, to the
Miramichi River in New Brunswick, and revisit some of the characters
remembered from the author’s Brennen Siding trilogy—The Americans
Are Coming (1989), The Last Tasmanian (1991), and The Lone Angler
(1993). Curtis’s last novel, Silent Partner (1996) was well received,
but we missed the quirky, folksy group of fishing and hunting guides
sequestered in the small hamlets alongside the river’s salmon-rich
waters. Stan Tuney, Dryfly Ramsey, Shad Nash, Lindon Tucker—all make
significant contributions to these more than two dozen new pieces, many
of them previously published in issues of The New Brunswick Reader, as
well as other periodicals.

Luther Corhern guides Cavender Bill, American “sport” and owner of
the Salmon Camp on the river. Luther (the only guide who can write) is
chosen to be chronicler (or “logger” as he calls it) of the lodge.
“With all the fish stories going around, we should be keeping a
log,” says Cavender Bill. “Just jot down a few things about the
guests who stay here at the Salmon Camp, how many fish are being
caught.” Luther does much more than that, of course. He is a
philosopher, a historian, and a born storyteller. He dutifully lists the
weight and species of the fish caught each day, but he also writes about
the new “convenient store” opened by Stan Tuney, about the risk of
the river flooding, and, above all, about his friends and their
relationships in this very special place they all call home. Welcome
back, Mr. Curtis.