Nineteen Years to Sunrise

Hardcover, 330 Pages.

Nineteen Years to Sunrise is an intimate and insightful collection of stories from a
lifetime of hunting and fishing across North America—from the forests and rivers of
Alaska and the great Canadian Shield, to the American West and the Florida Keys.
And, as you will read in these pages, quite nearly from beyond.

From the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains to the soaring southern Rockies. From the wild rivers of Alaska to the high deserts of the American Southwest, to the longleaf pines, Spanish moss and golden sedge of the deep South, Nineteen Years to Sunrise invites you to share some of the most sublime hunting and fishing experiences in North America.

From the Author's Into:
"You're in no hurry to finish (writing) the book and are instead content to let it proceed at its own pace and with its own rhythms. For the creative process is too delightful and blissfully close for you to want it to end, and the only concern you have is that you might die prematurely and leave it unfinished and no one will know."

...And that is precisely what almost happened. Because less than a week after the author and his daughter returned from their latest adventure along the Georgia coast hunting redfish, he suffered a sudden heart attack that nearly took him. And thought this book was for all intents and purposes finished, that single event re-shaped it in ways even the writer himself could never have imaged.

Reviews:
"Mike Altizer is one of those rare writers who can scrape away the surface grime encapsulating all that is human and burrow to the heart of things. Better yet, he is a writer who has the ability to look inside himself and relate his thoughts and feelings in such a way that it strikes a cord within the reader.

He is above all, a student of creation. Of everything, not just the outdoors and the sporting life, but of the human conditions and the relationship between humans and the rest of the universe.

The inevitable result is a rare intimacy between the writer and his audience—and a body of work that enriches both. I know he's good because of the number of times I've thought, "Damn, I wish I had written that!" when reading one of his manuscripts. It happened several times while I was reading the first draft of this book, and I have no doubt that it will happen again." -Robert Matthews

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Reading a Mike Altizer story is like sitting by an evening campfire in a hunting camp. His gifts are not only those of a fine storyteller, but a conjurer of images, using words like artists' brushes to color the landscapes of his, and our, memories. 

Turn to any page, read a passage and you'll discover that you've become part of his landscape, the passages beckoning you to the next mountaintop, the valleys beyond, and the shorelines of our own personal memories." -Jim Carmichel