North of Easie

Book Review  by Tom Roth                December 2009 Maine Sportsman

 

North of Easie

Robert J. Romano

Birch Brook Press

 

If you are familiar with the mountains of Western Maine and the Rangeley Region, the first few pages of Robert J. Romano’s North of Easie will give you that “I know that place” feeling that encourages a reader to push onward. Likewise, if you are an angler or anyone who has spent time in and around the waterways of the Rangeley Lakes Region, you will feel at home in his pages. Even if you have never visited the spots he alludes to in the fictional town of Easie, the story and plot will keep you as wound up as a well-tied hackle.

 

The cast of characters, some with names intentionally similar to locals, runs the gamut from store clerk to former Mafia don to punk rock singer.  The fictional town of Easie, depictions of angling and the descriptions of the sights and smells of the region will strike a chord in anyone who has lived or frequented the Western Maine area. 

 

After writing a major American novel, one of the main characters, Salvatore D’Amico,  falls off the grid and hides out in a cabin in Maine, ultimately becoming a fly fishing guide. Living with a black lab named Buck, Sal spends his days on the water and his nights with books, until a younger woman, Christine Buckley, appears in the town of Easie sporting a black eye and a mysterious past. Add a cast of fascinating characters and readers are treated to a fond, at times, tense close up of life in western Maine.

 

Even if you aren’t a student of the Rangeley region or an avid fly angler, Romano’s tale grabs a hold of the reader and pulls you from one chapter to the next, in anticipation of what the well-developed characters will do next.  Romano’s mix includes romance,  humor and even the tensions that present themselves for those of us who choose to live a rural existence.  The draw that Romano’s characters invoke is so strong that that if left on a table, a non-sporting spouse or significant other may well grab it and not put it back until finished. 

While North of Easie is his first novel, Romano is no stranger to the written word, having published Shadows in the Stream, a non-fiction book about fly fishing in Western Maine, and the philosophical Fishing With Faeries, both published by Birch Brook Press.