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In her new book about the writer Norman McLean, Rebecca McCarthy says she met him at the beginning

of her adult life and toward the end of his.

At this point, she says he had been afflicted by disease and despair.

His wife had died.

His teaching career at the University of Chicago was coming to an end.

McCarthy says for years, McLean had been working out a story about a family in Montana, where a Presbyterian minister taught his sons about God's grace and fly fishing. Of course, this was his own story, and when McLean was 73, he finished it. The novella, A River Runs Through It, became a sensation and an award-winning film.

Rebecca McCarthy is going to join us in a bit to talk about her book,

but we wanted to begin with A River Runs Through It.

McLean centers this story on his younger brother, Paul,

who was beaten to death in a back alley.

For years, he struggled with addictions, alcohol, and gambling.

McCarthy says McLean loved Paul, but he knew he couldn't help him.

We asked Mark Matheson to give us some perspective about the story.

Matheson is a professor of English at the University of Utah. He's also a fly fisher. And he began with the moment toward the end of the novella, Paul and Norman on the bank of a river.

Paul has not been willing to talk at all about the struggles that he's having

and that the members of his family, in some sense,

know he is having.

And pretty much out of the blue, Paul says,

you know, maybe I should leave Montana and go to the West Coast.

And Paul contemplates this.

...