This Death by Drowning

The first volume in William Kloefkorn's four-part memoir which, when completed, will cover the four elements: water, fire, earth, and air.

This Death by Drowning is a memoir with a difference-an artfully assembled collection of reminiscences, each having something to do with water. The book's epigraph, from Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It, proclaims, "I am haunted by waters." So-and in most rewarding ways-is William Kloefkorn.

The first chapter recalls the time when, at age six, ...