Skip to Main Content

Ruin: A Novel of Flyfishing in Bankruptcy

Published by City Point Press
Distributed by Simon & Schuster

LIST PRICE ₹741.00

PRICE MAY VARY BY RETAILER

About The Book

Ruin is a thoroughly engrossing novel about a young couple’s struggle back from financial catastrophe that so many of us dread. Having fled their urban life, they begin to build a new life together in a rural setting, far from former friends and colleagues—only to have it fall apart all over again in ways that could never be predicted.

Frank Campbell, a thirty-something former founding owner of a high-flying New York City-based hedge fund, has gone bankrupt, losing not only all his own money but the entire inherited fortune of his artist wife, Francy. The couple take refuge in an abandoned Hudson Valley farm shared with a resident herd of congenial goats. Frank is deeply shaken by the life-changing loss that has so thoroughly ruined their life together.

Frank tries to build a new microbrewery business on a shoestring but is haunted by the memory of passages from literature he revered as an undergraduate at Yale before jumping into finance. For Francy, her altered circumstances, after a lifetime of privilege, have galvanized her work as an artist and she distances herself from her struggling husband.

In the midst of it all, Frank takes up fly fishing on the nearby river, aspiring to join the local fishing club. Tragedy ensues during a fishing contest, further framing Frank as a “loser loner” in life. Only when he turns to fly fishing in earnest, traveling the world in search of the ever more perfect and elusive trout (and one memorable carp), does he find his way forward in “the yowling madness” of the world.

About The Author

Author Leigh Seippel lives in the worlds of Francy and Frank. He has worked a small farm in the Hudson Valley, complete with officious goat herd. Fly fishing has taken him across four continents. He is a past president of The Anglers’ Club of New York, where he now heads its fishery conservation activities.

Product Details

  • Publisher: City Point Press (September 27, 2022)
  • Length: 320 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781947951617

Raves and Reviews

"Seippel clearly knows his fly fishing...And we readers are reminded that fishing is only part of the reason we love to fish."

– Robert O'Harrow, Fly Fisherman Magazine

“I see a lot of books that are strong on fishing, weak on writing, or strong on writing and naive about real fishing. This one hits the right notes the right way.”

– Kirk Deeter, Trout Magazine

Resources and Downloads

High Resolution Images