This page is dedicated to the book A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean. Mr. Maclean's book was made into a movie by Robert Redford in 1992 and is one of the best movies of all time. When I finally read the book I found out why Redford was so inspired to bring the images to life. A River Runs Through It has to be one of the best books written in the last half of the 20th Century. It is so much more than a book about a fishing. On this page I have gathered together some information about the book and about Norman Maclean. Norman Maclean was born in 1902. His family moved from Iowa to Montana in 1909 where he and his brother, Paul, were educated by their father, a Scottish Presbyterian minister. During WW I Norman was too young to join the military so he stayed home and worked in loggin camps. He later received his bachelors degree in English from Dartmouth College and did his graduate work at the University of Chicago. In 1940 Maclean earned his doctorate from UC. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories was published in 1976. Norman Maclean died August 2, 1990 in Chicago. .

An excerpt from A River Runs Through It In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout rivers in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ's disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman. It is true that one day a week was given over wholly to religion. On Sunday mornings my brother, Paul, and I went to Sunday school and then to "morning services" to hear our father preach and in the evenings to Christian Endeavor and afterwards to "evening services" to hear our father preach again. In between on Sunday afternoons we had to study The Westminster Shorter Catechism for an hour and then recite before we could walk the hills with him while he unwound between services. But he never asked us more than the first question in the catechism, "What is the chief end of man?" And we answered together so one of us could carry on if the other forgot, "Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever." This always seemed to satisfy him, as indeed such a beautiful answer should have, and besides he was anxious to be on the hills where he could restore his soul and be filled again to overflowing for the evening sermon. His chief way of recharging himself was to recite to us from the sermon that was coming, enriched here and there with selections from the most successful passages of his morning sermon. Even so, in a typical week of our childhood Paul and I probably received as many hours of instruction in fly fishing as we did in all other spiritual matters. *

Big Blackfoot River On the Big Blackfoot River above the mouth of Belmont Creek the banks are fringed by large Ponderosa pines. In the slanting sun of late afternoon the shadows of great branches reached across the river, and the trees took the river in their arms.

Maclean and A River Runs Through It Links
	Rev. Maclean's Church in Missoula Movie Quotes from Movie Study Guide	Missoula, Montana Community Site Maclean - 100 Most Influential Montanans Outdoor Magazine Review of Book

Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters. * Copyright notice: Excerpted from pages 1-6 of A River Runs Through It, and Other Stories by Norman Maclean, published by the University of Chicago Press. ©1976 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the University of Chicago Press.