In A Long Cast, you share with readers your experiences with family and friends over five decades of surfcasting on Martha’s Vineyard. Why was this an important book for you to write?

The stories were starting to evaporate as time went on. I could feel them slipping away, and I wanted to capture them so years from now the kids would be able to simply share the book with someone they cared about and say, “It was like this.”
For the last several years, my adult daughter would keep prodding: “You should write these stories down, Dad.” And I kept deflecting it. Then, when I turned 70, I secretly decided to give it a try so I could maybe surprise them in the end. But I stalled. It was just dry, boring details at first. But when I asked my fishing friends if there was anything they would like to share for the book, it became clear that they, too, wanted documentation for their family and friends to have forever. I sensed their quiet pride and an unspoken hope, and this is what gave me the motivation I needed to get it across the finish line. I used the Dedication page to give the rationale for the book.

Is there anything else you now wish you had included in A Long Cast? A memory? An experience?

No. Not at all. But if there was a Prologue, it would contain the reactions after it came out. Everything from the successful construction company owner who said, “Only read one book my entire life. But I read this one in two days.” I gave each of the twenty-five featured fishermen a copy when it came out. One guy, looking at his copy, said to the other, “Geez. Didn’t know he (me) could write.” The other fishermen replied, “Didn’t know you could read.” The wife of a fisherman texted and explained that she always wished him well as he headed out the door for his annual fishing trip, but never figured out why he liked it so much. Now she knew, she said.

Right after the book came out, he got really ill and had to stop fishing. One day, she was reading the book outside his hospital room and started to laugh out loud. He asked her what was so funny. She read him the two paragraphs, and he laughed so hard and long that they had to settle him down. “It’s true.” He kept laughing. “It’s true. That’s Ed.” (The fisherman in the story.)

Different fishermen would reach out and tell me which story they liked best, and everyone has a different one. A younger fisherman said he bought a copy for his dad and told him it was because of the piece on The Partner. Another told me it was Retie. I think mine might be The Car. I still laugh out loud when I read it.

What advice would you give someone who is considering writing their own memoir?

Don’t make it about you. Make it about the encounters and conversations and actions of others that have been illuminating, convincing, affirming, paradoxically true, righteous, courageous, challenging, grace- filled, perplexing. Don’t report facts, and details, and accomplishments. Tell the stories of who and what has enriched the journey.

What is one thing you hope readers take away from your book?

I hope the reader can also find one or two things in the book to be true.

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