Lou Ureneck's BACKCAST in the Associated Press

River journey takes divorced dad and son farther than Alaska

By Jerry Harkavy ,
Associated Press, January 2nd, 2008

PORTLAND - When newspaper editor Lou Ureneck took his teenage son Adam on a 110-mile river journey through the Alaskan wilderness in August 2000, he had more in mind than observing wildlife and catching salmon and Arctic char.

The fishing trip was Ureneck's desperate attempt to reconnect with his son just before Adam went off to college, an effort to ensure that the angry and alienated youngster, who blamed his father for his parents' bitter divorce, would remain a part of his life.

As the two traveled by raft down the Kanektok River to the sea, a trip fraught with dangerous episodes, nasty weather and repressed emotions that sprung to the surface, Ureneck jotted down his thoughts and observations in a journal. Three years later, he decided to write about the trip and realized there was a lot more to the story than he had anticipated.

"As the narrative unfolded, there was this kind of undertow that pulled me back to my own childhood, and it eventually became a book really about paternity, about fatherhood. These two different journeys - the journey down the river and the journey growing up as a boy, as a fisherman, without a father," Ureneck, 57, said in an interview. By examining his past, he was better able to come to terms with it.

His critically acclaimed memoir, "Backcast," weaves the 10-day father-and-son adventure in southwestern Alaska with Ureneck's own back story, beginning with a chaotic upbringing in New Jersey in which his father walked out when he was 7 and disappeared from his life. The family was strapped for money and Ureneck remembers having to move 17 times during childhood, sometimes skipping out on the rent.

As he grew to manhood, Ureneck yearned for a normal life, promising himself that he would keep his family intact. He vowed to never subject his two children to the kind of grief he endured when his father, and later his alcoholic stepfather whom he truly loved, were lost to him because of divorce.

Early on, he found solace in fly fishing. His book draws its title from fishing - when a line is thrown back in order to propel it forward. When the backcast is right, the forward cast is more likely to be on target.

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