THE WHISPERED TEACHINGS OF GRANDMOTHER TROUT

In Sparrow’s romance, an editor’s life changes while on a fishing trip.

Ali Stephenson, the main character in Sparrow’s debut novel, is the managing editor of Southern Style magazine, and she’s about to turn 40. She reluctantly agrees with her boss Joe Driscoll that she’s a bit burned out and could use a change of pace (“a vacant look rested upon her face, occasionally disrupted by the knitting of her brow”). Knowing she loves fly-fishing, he gives her just such an assignment: a weekend trip to Arroyo City in small-town southern Texas, where she’ll write about sea trout fishing. Irritated with her halfhearted office romance with Sam Hagan (“he had sensitive skin and abhorred the out of doors”), Ali herself feels like she’s at a crossroads. “Something was taking hold of her,” she reflects. “Something that had the power to turn her life into a complete mess or transform it into something far better than she could ever imagine.” In Arroyo City, she revels in the natural world (“horses grazed along the road, dogs slept lazily under porches, and scissor-tailed flycatchers darted overhead”); meets her guide for the weekend, Capt. Jack Cooper (“she met his gaze, taking note of his pronounced cheekbones and soft brown eyes”); and begins to unwind and, maybe, fall in love. Sparrow tells this admittedly familiar story with a good amount of vividness and gusto, although she’s prone to purple prose (“Her heart raced, and her resolve melted like ice cream on a hot South Texas day”), and her rustic characters talk like Hollywood’s idea of small-town yokels (“Kate McGregor, known around these parts as Mama Kate,” and so on). The author so relentlessly telegraphs the main elements of her plot that most romance readers will only need a few pages in order to predict with high accuracy everything that’s going to happen with Ali, her little daughter Grace, and Capt. Jack. Still, readers who prize a warmhearted story with a serviceable plot will find a lot to like.

An affectionate, involving, unsurprising story about love and fly-fishing.