Volume 40, Number 3 · January 28, 1993
Death in Montana
By Robert M. Adams
Young Men and Fire
by Norman Maclean
University of Chicago Press, 301 pp., $19.95
A River Runs Through It
by Norman Maclean, engravings by Barry Moser
University of Chicago Press, 162 pp., $24.95
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
by Norman Maclean
University of Chicago Press, 281 pp., $9.95 (paper)
A River Runs Through It
a film directed by Robert Redford
The crucial event of Norman Maclean's last book (he died in 1990) was a forest fire in the rugged western mountains of Montana. The fire took place in August of 1949; Maclean, who was then and had been for years a member of the department of English at the University of Chicago, was not actually present at the blaze, but he had ample reason to be concerned with it. Many years earlier, between other jobs and intervals of an academic career, he had spent a couple of summers with the Forest Service; he knew the district well, and still maintained a summer cabin at Sealey Lake some miles away. He had a technical interest in the form of forest fires and their often erratic behavior. He was of course in no condition to man a fire line, but his impulse to understand this major tragedy of the deep woods was insatiable.
Review, 1910 words
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