There is that moment when you are fishing with a friend, when you approach a very promising spot together—who is going to take the first cast? As I have been learning about trout fishing in the streams of my still-new home of Missouri, my friend and guide Steve will almost always do the gracious thing: He’ll point out the barely visible foam line or an imperceptibly small but deep pool and tell me to cast to it. He’ll watch as I’ll try and sometimes catch the trout and other times fumble or get hung up. I say “almost always” because as our friendship has deepened and he sees me getting more familiar with these fish, I’ve occasionally noticed—as I’m disentangling my leader or focused determinedly on a particular cutbank—Steve will wade quietly away from me and take some of those first casts himself. I’ll look up and see his rod bent and a fish splashing.

I tell this story because I thought about subtle social dynamics like these, the give-and-take of friendships formed over fishing outings, as I read the new book Jimmy Carter: Rivers & Dreams published by Bitter Southerner this month. This is a book of narratives by Jim Barger Jr. and Carlton Hicks, following 12 flyfishing trips to different locations around the world with Jimmy Carter. Each chapter involves the alternating perspectives of Barger and Hicks, two key players in Carter’s entourage (which also included his wife, Rosalynn), a tight-knit group of fishing buddies who accompanied the President as he navigated geopolitical puzzles large and small before, during and after his single term as leader of the United States.

If one were, I don’t know, dismayed or enraptured by the latest presidency, this would be an excellent book to adopt for personal reading—or better yet, to organize a book group around. For those despondent about the current state of affairs, this book offers an alternative account of presidential power: not as sheer might or brazen confidence, but as intentional mediation, conciliation, collaboration and cooperation. These latter traits are detailed through anecdotes by Barger Jr. and Hicks as they travel with Carter to flyfish, but always while Carter is working through delicate negotiations or reflecting on complex implications involving other leaders, populations, economic structures and ecosystems. The book is really a history lesson that covers Carter’s different leadership roles on disparate world stages, how his character evolves and how flyfishing is a through-line that lets Barger Jr. and Hicks track Carter’s impressively long career.

For those readers celebrating the new administration in 2025, this book is a worthwhile read because it reminds us of the caprices of power, the long-game of democracy, and the mortality of leaders. It also brings us back relentlessly to the inescapable ground (and water) that sustains all life on this planet. The sketches we get of Carter traveling with his friends, traipsing through riparian zones and casting to various fish, well into his 90s, are entertaining and reassuring no matter which color one’s political blood runs—at least I hope they would be. This potential strikes me as an unusual virtue of Jimmy Carter: Rivers & Dreams: It’s obvious, of course, that the authors are fans of Carter and his leadership prowess (even if it was often underappreciated or even mocked). But the flyfishing scenes, woven throughout a view back over nearly five decades of American maneuvers, peace deals and skirmishes, serves to buffer any easy sense of partisanship. This is a book for readers who take leadership and citizenship seriously, for those who can handle the wins and the losses, the ebbs and flows of political and natural life—which may turn out to be one and the same, or at least all part of a continuous fabric.

Throughout the book the voices of Barger Jr. and Hicks take shape, and the reader gets to know Carter through these two storytellers who focus on different things—but the reader also gets to know Barger and Hicks as Carter’s friends and fellow flyfishers. This knowledge and friendship forged over multiple fishing excursions becomes a blueprint for other patterns of sharing, learning from one another, and tuning in to different contexts and the people and fish and birds (and much, much more) who live there. I have deep respect for collaborative projects, and I applaud the authors and their publisher for taking on this project and letting it come together as a tight yet impressionistic and polyphonic portrait of one leader, Jimmy Carter, as he jostles and meets with many others, therapeutically flyfishing along the way.

In this book flyfishing is a medium for camaraderie, as well as a sort of practical and repeatable parable, for the co-authors and for Jimmy Carter, a leader among many.

Jimmy Carter: Rivers & Dreams

Hardcover, 288 pages. Bitter Southerner Publishing, 2025.

Christopher Schaberg is the author of nine books, including Fly-Fishing (2023).