Norman Maclean grew up in western Montana shortly after the turn of the century, the son of strict Scottish parents. And it contains universal themes-I like to think it deals with families, on how we connect and do not connect.” “Norman’s language is a map of soul, of place, of time-where he was raised and when he was raised. He gets up and sits in a folding chair, alone, in the center aisle of the trailer, away from the table but trapped by words: vexing, slippery, on-the-point, off-the-point words. Redford tells even less about the facts of his life but has made it plain that he, like Maclean, comes from a tough “take-it-on-the-chin ethic” and that punishment in his boyhood home in Santa Monica sometimes meant being iced out into silent, wordless places. Still, the book’s main concern, despite all the fishing, is in probing how Norman Maclean may or may not have been able to help his younger brother, Paul, save himself from ruin and death.
Maclean’s novella depicts relationships subtextually, by fleeting reference. Both Maclean and Redford are of Scottish descent and come from families in which love runs deep but is at risk for failure to communicate.
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