Lessons in Parenting From a Salmon

June 17, 2026 - 17:30

In a literary landscape crowded with predictable infertility memoirs, Joseph Osmundson's "Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood" offers something genuinely strange and refreshing. The book does not follow the usual arc of failed cycles, frozen embryos, and eventual triumph. Instead, Osmundson uses the life cycle of the Pacific salmon as a central metaphor for his own journey into fatherhood.

The author, a queer scientist and writer, spent years studying salmon biology. He noticed how the fish fight upstream against impossible odds, how their bodies transform as they approach reproduction, and how they ultimately give everything to the next generation. This biological framework becomes a lens for examining his own path to parenthood. Osmundson writes about the exhaustion of fertility treatments, the anxiety of waiting, and the strange intimacy of medical procedures. But he never lets the science overshadow the human story.

What makes the book stand out is its refusal to sentimentalize. Osmundson does not pretend that parenting is a pure, uncomplicated joy. He acknowledges the mess, the fear, and the way a child changes everything about a relationship. The salmon metaphor works because it is honest. Salmon do not survive spawning. They die. Osmundson does not push that comparison too far, but he lets it linger, asking what parents sacrifice and what they gain.

The prose is precise and poetic without being overwrought. Osmundson describes the texture of a salmon's skin, the cold of a river, and the warmth of a newborn's head with equal care. He moves between scientific observation and personal reflection seamlessly. Readers who are tired of the standard infertility narrative will find something new here. It is a book about biology, yes, but also about love, loss, and the strange, beautiful act of bringing a new person into a broken world.