Author: Walter Macdougall, Editor
Publisher: NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK, Jan 2002
Binding: Hardcover
ISBN: 0-89272-544-3
Synopsis
Arthur Macdougall's famous tales of everybody's favorite fictional Maine guide. includes many of the best of Dud Dean from FIELD & STREAM, and some stories that have never before been published. 7 B&W drawings; 6x9 inches, 270 pgs.
More Information
A fictional Maine guide who won many friends and admirers through the pages of Field & Stream magazine in the 1920s and '30s. Dud Dean is very much a product of his creator, Arthur Macdougall. Arthur was an avid outdoorsman and a minister in Bingham, Maine, a tiny town perched on the northern reaches of the mighty Kennebec River. This book includes many of the best of Dud Dean from Field & Stream, and some stories that have never before been published.
Walter Macdougall, Arthur's son, describes the birth of the Dud Dean stories in his introduction to the book: "Dud Dean and his adventures first took life in what our family called 'the study camp'. It sat perched on a steep bank above the water--as far from our family quarters on Wyman Lake as our limited property would allow. There in the camp's cozy smallness my father, Arthur Macdougall -- or Mak, as he was known by friends near and far---crafted these classic hunting and fishing tales." Readers of these humorous, yet poignant, tales will step into a simpler world for a time.
WALTER MACDOUGALL WRITES:
"Action swirls in these stories. We feel the tension in the straining leader. We fear we may step on a twig and warn the splendid buck. We settle back in the yellow lamplight and sense the warmth of the camp stove...As my father put it, Dud tramps in 'a less involved and a more elementally real world.' At another time we can feel the cold rain dribble down our back as we fish a mist-shrouded wilderness pond. ..."
EXCERPT FROM "DUD GUIDES A LADY"
"Tarnation! I busts out. "Give me that rod! D'yer hear?"
It has always been my intention to be a gentleman, wherever, an' whenever, but I guess I fergot that I had a lady aboard. I purty nigh upset the canoe, myself, a-reachin' fer that rod. Fust thing I knew, I had it in my hands. I'd a looked less foolish if I had known enough to let her finish what she'd begun. With them turns, bowlines, hangman's knots, sheep-shanks, an' what not, I had erbout as much chance of landin' that salmon as a deacon at a Democratic rally.
He fetched one er two jumps an' was gone. It took me half an hour to untangle that line. While I was workin' away on the line, I heard a funny noise an' looked up quick. By gum if that flapper warn't bawlin'. I felt meaner'n a rabbit 'ith fleas, but I c'udn't think of nothin' to say.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Walter Macdougall is a retired history and geography professor from the University of Maine and author of The Old Somerset Railroad: A lifeline for Northern Mainers. He lives in Milo, Maine, near where he grew up, halfway between Moosehead Lake and Mt. Katahdin. Walter enjoys writing, painting, woodowrking, fishing, and doing historical research.
