A River Runs Through It: And Other Stories

University of Chicago Press, 1992. Softcover. Very Good. 5x0x8. The finely distilled product of a long life of often surprising rapture for fly-fishing, for the woods, for the interlocked beauty of life and art, A River Runs through It has established itself as a classic of the American West. Based on Macleans own experiences as a young man, the books two novellas and short story are set in the small towns and mountains of western Montana. It is a world populated with drunks, loggers, card sharks, and whores, but also one rich in the pleasures of fly-fishing, logging, cribbage, and family. By turns raunchy and elegiac, these superb tales express, in Macleans own words, a little of the love I have for the earth as it goes by. Norman Fitzroy Maclean (December 23, 1902 – August 2, 1990) was a Scottish-American professor at the University of Chicago who became, following his retirement, a major figure in American literature. Maclean is best known for his collection of novellas A River Runs Through It and Other Stories (1976) and the creative nonfiction book Young Men and Fire (1992). Perhaps the most famous Montana fishing story ever written — “A River Runs Through It and Other Stories,” published in 1976, has attained cult status.