Return to the River: A Story of the Chinook Run

Return to the River: A Story of the Chinook Run; by Roderick L. Haig-Brown; with illustrations by Charles DeFeo; McClelland & Stewart Limited, Toronto, first Canadian edition 1946. Copyright 1941. From the blurb – The story of the autumn run of Columbia River chinooks remains an unspoiled epic in the natural life of the North American Continent. And Roderick L. Haig-Brown, observing with the trained eye of a naturalist what he records with a novelist’s narrative skill, here sets forth the life history of one salmon from her hatching through her mating. The full cycle of the chinook migration is captured in every significant detail: the departure seaward of the millions of small-fry in the spring of the second year, the salt-water life of the free-swimming schools in the deeps beyond Puget Sound, the later return of the survivors – sixty and eighty pounders that leap against every obstacle, striving to complete their lives at last among upland shallows barely deep enough to contain them. This book, 248 pages is in near-fine condition, in a very-good dust jacket, that is now enclosed in a protective mylar wrap. There is a small ownership signature on the first free endpaper.…