Beginning with the memorable line, "In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing," Maclean paints an evocative portrait of the sons of a small-town Montana minister, two brothers headed in very different directions. Fly-fishing for trout is one thing that unites father and sons, and, in the end, it is the language of the river that provides understanding and acceptance in the most difficult of times. A River Runs Through It is arguably the best piece of fly-fishing literature ever written, and the paperback edition includes two great non-fly fishing stories.


From Publishers Weekly
This story of a Montana forest fire in 1949. A 14-week PW bestseller and a NBCC Award-winner. 50,000 first printing. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


From Library Journal
One of the best-selling audiotapes ever, this title became hard to find recently, as it fell victim to a series of buyouts of various publishers. HighBridge is putting a new cover on this classic reading by Ivan Doig, Montana native and author of This House of Sky. Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
Just as Norman Maclean writes at the end of "A River Runs through It" that he is "haunted by waters," so have readers been haunted by his novella. A retired English professor who began writing fiction at the age of 70, Maclean produced what is now recognized as one of the classic American stories of the twentieth century. Originally published in 1976, A River Runs through It and Other Stories now celebrates its twenty-fifth anniversary, marked by this new edition that includes a foreword by Annie Proulx.

Maclean grew up in the western Rocky Mountains in the first decades of the twentieth century. As a young man he worked many summers in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service. The two novellas and short story in this collection are based on his own experiencesthe experiences of a young man who found that life was only a step from art in its structures and beauty. The beauty he found was in reality, and so he leaves a careful record of what it was like to work in the woods when it was still a world of horse and hand and foot, without power saws, "cats," or four-wheel drives. Populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, and set in the small towns and surrounding trout streams and mountains of western Montana, the stories concern themselves with the complexities of fly fishing, logging, fighting forest fires, playing cribbage, and being a husband, a son, and a father.

By turns raunchy, poignant, caustic, and elegiac, these are superb tales which express, in Maclean's own words, "a little of the love I have for the earth as it goes by." A first offering from a 70-year-old writer, the basis of a top-grossing movie, and the first original fiction published by the University of Chicago Press, A River Runs through It and Other Stories has sold more than a million copies. As Proulx writes in her foreword to this new edition, "In 1990 Norman Maclean died in body, but for hundreds of thousands of readers he will live as long as fish swim and books are made."

"Altogether beautiful in the power of its feeling. . . . As beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway."--Alfred Kazin, Chicago Tribune Book World

"It is an enchanted tale. . . . I have read the story three times now, and each time it seems fuller."-- Roger Sale, New York Review of Books

"Maclean's book--acerbic, laconic, deadpan--rings out of a rich American tradition that includes Mark Twain, Kin Hubbard, Richard Bissell, Jean Shepherd, and Nelson Algren. I love its sound."--James R. Frakes, New York Times Book Review

"The title novella is the prize. . . . Something unique and marvelous: a story that is at once an evocation of nature's miracles and realities and a probing of human mysteries. Wise, witty, wonderful, Maclean spins his tales, casts his flies, fishes the rivers and the woods for what he remembers from his youth in the Rockies."--Publishers Weekly

"Ostensibly a 'fishing story,' 'A River Runs through It' is really an autobiographical elegy that captivates readers who have never held a fly rod in their hand. In it the art of casting a fly becomes a ritual of grace, a metaphor for man's attempt to move into nature."--Andrew Rosenheim, The Independent

Norman Maclean (1902-1990) was the William Rainey Harper Professor of English at the University of Chicago. His book on Montana's Mann Gulch forest fire of 1949, Young Men and Fire, is also available from the University of Chicago Press.

ANNOTATION

From its first sentence to the last, this novella by Norman Maclean will captivate readers with its vivid images of the Blackfoot River, its tender yet realistic renderings of Maclean's father and brother and its uncanny blending of fly fishing with the affections of the heart. "Wise, witty, wonderful . . ."--Publishers Weekly.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Maclean grew up in the western Rocky Mountains in the first decades of the twentieth century. As a young man he worked many summers in logging camps and for the United States Forest Service. The two novellas and short story in this collection are based on his own experiences - the experiences of a young man who found that life was only a step from art in its structures and beauty. The beauty he found was in reality, and so he leaves a careful record of what it was like to work in the woods when it was still a world of horse and hand and foot, without power saws, "cats," or four-wheel drives.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

One of the best-selling audiotapes ever, this title became hard to find recently, as it fell victim to a series of buyouts of various publishers. HighBridge is putting a new cover on this classic reading by Ivan Doig, Montana native and author of This House of Sky. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

AudioFile - Robert Berlinger

Norman Maclean￯﾿ﾽs A River Runs Through It portrays two brothers￯﾿ﾽ passion for the sport of fly fishing against the rugged wilderness of Montana in the thirties. While the prose of this evocative and lyrical memoir is simple and direct, Maclean￯﾿ﾽs observations of man and nature are keen. At every turn, then, this seemingly simple story is charged with more sublime and universal implications. Joel Fabiani￯﾿ﾽs reading of Maclean￯﾿ﾽs text, while precise, is passionless and emotionally un-involving. While the simplicity of the text may be clearly rendered, the listener is forced to fight upstream against Fabiani￯﾿ﾽs flat, narration in order to luxuriate in the novel￯﾿ﾽs rich moments of transcendent splendor. R.W.B. ￯﾿ﾽAudioFile, Portland, Maine

Alfred Kazin

Altogether beautiful in the power of its feelings....As beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway. -- Chicago Tribune Book World

Roger Sale

It is an enchanted tale....I have read the story three times now and each time it seems fuller. -- The New York Review of Books

Dale Burk - Dale Burk,Missoulian

One of the most sensitive and beautiful writers I've ever read. Read all 7 "From The Critics" >

WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING