Jake Cruz, a decorated M.P., is back from Afghanistan with a war torn soul. Hardly an hour passes that he doesn't dream of swallowing his own weapon. The sole reason Jake has to put one foot in front of the other is a tear-stained letter he's promised to deliver to a person he's never met in a place he's never been-the jagged peaks of the Backbone-of-the-World.

Nearing the end of his quest, Jake stumbles into Trout Town. He's looking for whiskey to beat back the chill of a spring snow squall-but what he finds is Wounded Warriors, a program that uses fly-fishing to help ease veterans back into civilian life. For Jake, it's enough. Those pesky trout get under his skin. Sixteen months later he's caught at least one fish every day, and although Jake remains plagued with flashbacks and nightmares, he's found that shooting the television helps.

In Trout Town, fly-fishing is the thread that binds people to place, and 500 million years of Montana history is the needle that pulls the thread. The implacable grandeur of the American west resonates like another character in this book, singing right along with a cast of iconoclasts that include a Blackfeet warrior who whispers with eagles, a banjo-playing exhibitionist, and a burly scientist-philosopher who lives to the sound of one tooth chewing.

It's O.K. to be a little crazy in Trout Town because you'll fit right in. Jake doesn't just have friends in his new home, he has family, and when one of their own gets shot as part of a kidnapping plot Jake rides point on the investigation. When the case gets ugly, Jake needs all the considerable help his family of quirky friends can offer as he follows the clues from an innocuous riverside tryst to the seamy white underbelly of domestic terrorism.