Meeting Maclean and Chicago -- Light and shadow -- Seeley Lake summer -- Walking the city through stories -- Finding Montana -- Western friends -- Tragedy was inevitable -- Creating the committee -- Searching for a story -- Student and teacher -- A choice soul -- Tragedy and accident -- The crux of it all -- The work never ends -- Loose ends and long friendships -- No time to tarry -- Honors and unfinished work

"A River Runs Through It and Other Stories" turned Norman Maclean into a late-in-life literary phenomenon and then a household name after the success of the Hollywood film based on the title story. Yet fewer know of Maclean's lifelong struggles to reconcile very different parts of himself: the revered teacher and writer in the intellectual hub of Chicago and the Montana man compelled by the wildness and traumas of his home state and family, including the tragic Mann Gulch fire and the murder of his brother. Rebecca McCarthy's intimate portrait of Maclean draws on her long friendship with the author from the time she became a student at the University of Chicago through the rest of his life. Irrepressible as a teacher, Maclean shared guidance, advice, campus and city rambles, and loyal friendship with generations of students. Behind the scenes, he honed an art as meditative and patient as his approach to fly fishing. McCarthy's experiences intertwine with stories from friends, family, colleagues, and others to detail an incredibly rich life that seemed destined to remain divided-until the creation of his classic American story"--