Lour Ureneck's Backcast in the Star-Ledger

A fisherman's catch: The son who got away
BY PETER GENOVESE
Star-Ledger, Wednesday, November 14, 2007

A river has always run through Lou Ureneck's life. In his childhood, there was the little river that flowed in a broad curve behind Gorski's Hardware in Spotswood. There, he would catch catfish, bluegills, yellow perch and once a 34-inch chain pickerel that won him the local fishing derby.

Later, after his family moved to Toms River, it was the Metedeconk River, where he would put out traps for blue-claw crabs and swim in the muddy water. After that, it was a brook that ran under a railroad trestle in Keyport, where he would use bloodworms to catch flounder.

Seven years ago, it was the Kanektok River in western Alaska, where Ureneck, then 49, hoped to close the rift that had developed between the newspaper editor and his son, Adam, then 18. Ureneck had been divorced from Adam's mother for a year, and his son was angry and bitter.

"I have to admit the trip was a little desperate," Ureneck writes in "Backcast: Fatherhood, Fly-fishing and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska" (St. Martin's Press, $24.95).

"My life was in a ditch," Ureneck continues. "I was broke from lawyers, therapists and alimony payments and fearful that my son's anger was hardening into lifelong permanence. I wanted to pull him back into my life. I feared losing him. Alaska was my answer."

It was almost their undoing; the trip was challenging and harrowing. There was an encounter with a 9-foot-tall brown bear, and a scary, surreal trip through a twisty, varicose-veined section of the Kanektok called the Braids.

"I'm a furious rewriter," Ureneck said by phone from his office at Boston University, where he is chairman of the Department of Journalism. "I must have rewritten the opening section 30-40 times."

"Backcast" is a compelling read, part true adventure, part commentary on fatherhood and life's twists and turns.

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