Bill Heavey – författare

"Mr. Heavey takes us back to the joys--and occasional pitfalls--of the humble edibles around us, and his conclusions ring true."--Wall Street Journal Longtime Field & Stream contributor Bill Heavey has become the magazine's most popular voice by writing for sportsmen with more enthusiasm than skill. In his first full-length book, Heavey chronicles his attempts to "eat wild," seeing how much of his own food he can hunt, fish, grow, and forage. But Heavey is not your typical hunter-gatherer. Living inside the D.C. Beltway, and a single dad to a twelve-year-old daughter with an aversion to "nature food," he's almost completely ignorant of gardening and foraging. Incensed at the squirrels destroying his tomatoes, he is driven to rodent murder--by arrow. Along the way, Heavey is guided by a number of unlikely teachers, from the eccentric Paula, who runs an under-the-table bait business, to Michelle, an attractive single mom unselfconsciously devoted to eating locally. To the delight of his readers and the embarrassment of his daughter, he suffers blood loss, humiliation, and learns, as he puts it, that "'edible' is not to be confused with 'tasty.'"

In two decades at Field & Stream, the nation's biggest outdoor magazine, Bill Heavey has become America's everyman outdoorsman. Why? Because he believes that enthusiasm trumps skill. When he forgets his hat on a freezing winter hunt, he improvises, cutting open the juice-stained plush golden retriever puppy his daughter left in the car and using it as headgear. Trying to impress a lady, he flips his canoe and loses everything in the boat. Heavey takes you along with him as he nearly freezes to death in the 30-below cold of Alaska, and he also survives a divorce, plans deer hunts around his duties as a single dad, and defies a back doctor who tells him his tree-stand days may be coming to an end. Throughout, he is alive to both the ridiculousness and poignancy of life. Collecting more than sixty of Heavey's best stories from Field & Stream, the Washington Post, and the Washingtonian, this far-ranging and enlightening volume traces a life lived outdoors through the good, the bad, and the downright hilarious.

Whether he is accidentally cooking his brain with hand warmers or yanking his lure away from a trophy fish just before it takes the bait, Bill Heavey can do no right. For almost a decade, he has chronicled his incompetence on the back page of Field & Stream, where his hilarious dispatches about life as a hapless outdoorsman who lives in suburbia have earned him legions of fans. But Heavey is more than a humorist. The stories in this book range from amusing tales of a modern dad struggling to navigate the finer points of parenting and married life to longer and more serious narratives that involve travel, adventure, and tragedy. No matter what he's writing about, Heavey is a master of blending humor and pathos--and wide-ranging outdoor enthusiasms--into a poignant and potent stew.

The popular Field and Stream columnist shares the many joys—and even more numerous pains—of his hilarious outdoor antics in this essay collection.For more than twenty years, Bill Heavey—a three-time National Magazine Award finalist—has staked a claim as one of America’s best sportswriters. In his Field & Stream column, “A Sportsman’s Life,” and feature stories for that magazine and others, he takes readers across the country and beyond to experience his triumphs and failures as a suburban dad who happens to love hunting and fishing. This new collection gathers a wide range of Heavey’s best work. He nearly drowns attempting to fish the pond inside the cloverleaf off an interstate highway four miles from the White House. He almost destroys a houseboat on a river in Florida and bravely buys pantyhose to save his legs on a long horseback ride into the Wyoming mountains. Whether he’s hunting mule deer in Montana, draining cash on an overpriced pistol, or ruminating on the joys and agonies of outdoor gear, Heavey’s tales are odes to the notion that enthusiasm is more important than skill.“Readers don’t have to hunt or fish to appreciate Mr. Heavey’s essays, which . . . are more complicated than they first appear. The title of his book evokes the knee-slapping comedy of the campfire, a promise that his peculiar brand of farce frequently fulfills. But he also displays a gift for the sublime.” —Wall Street Journal