Looking for June

A reflective memoir in which fly fishing and wilderness provide the emotional framework for a man’s late-life search for his birth mother.

After a lifetime of unanswered questions about his adoption, Mark Cloutier begins searching for the woman who gave him up. As he works through records, names, and long silences, he returns again and again to wild rivers—places that have always steadied him. Told through days spent fly fishing in remote landscapes, Looking for June explores identity, masculinity, and mental health with restraint and precision.  

Rather than offering therapy or confession, the book uses time in nature as structure. Fly fishing becomes a way to slow thought, sit with uncertainty, and confront difficult truths without forcing resolution. Clear-eyed and unsentimental, Looking for June will resonate with readers drawn to serious memoir, outdoor writing, and stories of identity shaped quietly over a lifetime.