"Beautiful. ... A lyrical companion to his father's classic, A River
Runs through It, chronicling their family's history and bond with
Montana's Blackfoot River." --Washington Post
A "poetic" and "captivating" (Publishers Weekly) memoir about the
power of place to shape generations, Home Waters is John N. Maclean's
remarkable chronicle of his family's century-long love affair with
Montana's majestic Blackfoot River, the setting for his father's classic
novella, A River Runs through It. Maclean returns annually to the
simple family cabin that his grandfather built by hand, still in search
of the trout of a lifetime. When he hooks it at last, decades of longing
promise to be fulfilled, inspiring John, reporter and author, to finally
write the story he was born to tell.
A book that will resonate with everyone who feels deeply rooted to a
landscape, Home Waters is a portrait of a family who claimed a river,
from one generation to the next, of how this family came of age in the
20th century and later as they scattered across the country, faced
tragedy and success, yet were always drawn back to the waters that bound
them together. Here are the true stories behind the beloved characters
fictionalized in A River Runs through It, including the Reverend
Maclean, the patriarch who introduced the family to fishing; Norman, who
balanced a life divided between literature and the tug of the rugged
West; and tragic yet luminous Paul (played by Brad Pitt in Robert
Redford's film adaptation), whose mysterious death has haunted the
family and led John to investigate his uncle's murder and reveal new
details in these pages.
A universal story about nature, family, and the art of fly fishing,
Maclean's memoir beautifully captures the inextricable ways our personal
histories are linked to the places we come from--our home waters.
Featuring twelve wood engravings by Wesley W. Bates and a map of the
Blackfoot River region.