“The burned landscape and the desolate swamp in that case could stand for a writer’s creative unconscious.”
When I was a youngster struggling to reconcile a life split between a great community of learning in the Midwest and a log cabin in Montana, my father gave me Ernest Hemingway’s “Big Two-Hearted River” to read. The story came as a revelation. My parents hailed from Montana, where we spent our summers, and they both worked at the University of Chicago, my father as a professor of English and my mother as an administrator for the university’s medical center.
Hemingway’s tale evoked the core activity of our life in Montana: trout fishing. It put you hip-deep in a river with Nick Adams, Hemingway’s literary twin, a cold current throbbing against your thighs. You tasted the humidity in the air above the river, a second stream thick with insect life and a sweet musk smell from the enclosing brush. The story virtually put the rod in your hand to fight a big fish. Best of all for me, it bridged the gap between my two worlds and brought trout fishing to life through literature.
By John N. Maclean / Lithub, May 11, 2023
BOOK REVIEW - HOME WATERS: A CHRONICLE OF FAMILY AND A RIVER BY JOHN N. MACLEAN
Be it thread or bridge, the insights revealed in these pages push beyond family lineage and into the interconnected web of life and how our relationship to place is a vital current that never ceases. Maclean acknowledges how he sees himself as reflected by those shimmering, sometimes beguiling waters, always peering deeper to understand the “. . . living, physical link binding us together.” You do not have to be a devout angler or have previously read A River Runs Through It to enjoy Home Waters. The book is a testament to the power of place and the love that binds us, throughout the generations. Home Waters is a keeper.
By Maggie Doherty / Flathead Beacon, April 27, 2022
Book Review - Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River by John N. Maclean
Home Waters displays, in my judgment, Maclean’s best writing to date. He frames his memoir with a prologue and epilogue that border nine chapters. He opens with a fine triadic sentence of the sort his father favored, recounting a fairly recent day on the family river: “The trout rose in a smooth arc, took my tumbling salmon fly, and completed its curve in an undulating, revelatory sequence” (3). At the Big Blackfoot’s legendary Muchmore Hole—crowded with anglers in the decades since River changed the fly-fishing industry—Maclean has “hooked the biggest rainbow I’ve ever seen on the Blackfoot” (6). He leads us to believe he might lose this giant, and we wait until the epilogue to learn the outcome (241).
By O. Alan Weltzien / Western American Literature, Volume 57, Number 1, Spring 2022
Home Waters RECEIVES 2021 Montana Book Award - Honor AWARD
The Montana Book Award is an annual award that recognizes literary and/or artistic excellence in a book published during the award year. Eligible titles are either set in Montana, deal with Montana themes/issues, or are written, edited or illustrated by a Montana author or artist. Each year, since 2001, the committee gives a book of the year award and three to four Honors Awards each year.
Home Waters, the committee said, is a "gorgeous chronicle of a family and a land they call home. This is a meditation on fly fishing and life along Montana's Blackfoot River, where four generations of Macleans have fished, bonded, and drawn timeless lessons from its storied waters."
Home Waters Nominated for the 32nd Annual Reading the West Book Awards
Reading the West was conceived to celebrate the diversity, courage, tenacity, expertise, and indie spirit of the bookstores in the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association. Our goal is to bring bookstores, books, and readers together, to promote the best of our regional authors and stories, and to feature the passionate recommendations of our booksellers.
Independent booksellers across the region are reviewing the titles now and curating shortlists in each category.
Opinion: This Montana river is threatened by one senator and a bitter clash over use of public lands
When after many years I finally found a way back to the Blackfoot River in western Montana, it was a dream come true. I returned at a lucky time, after an extraordinary restoration effort had brought the river back to health from a sorry state, caused by pollution and overfishing.
But today, thanks to one U.S. senator and the increasingly bitter clash over use of public lands in the West, the cold, clear waters of the Blackfoot are endangered once again.
By John N. Maclean / The Washington Post, November 16, 2021
BOOK SPOTLIGHT: JOHN N. MACLEAN – HOME WATERS
In his new book Home Waters, John N. Maclean, son of Norman Maclean, author of A River Runs Through It, reflects on his family’s storied fishing history.
By Leonard Schoenberger / The Wading List, June 22, 2021
'Home Waters' connects fly-fishing with family: 'It brings out the best in people'
Home waters conjure up a specific place for a fly-fisher.
By Jeff Zillgitt / USA Today, June 20, 2021
‘Home Waters’ book by John Maclean is not a memoir but it’s filled with marvelous memories
You will not discover much about John N. Maclean in his new and graceful and compelling book, “Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River” (Custom House) and that was his intention.
By Rick Kogan / Chicago Tribune, June 16, 2021
Fathers and Sons
John Maclean reflects on fishing, family, his new book and the timeless novella that made his father famous
By Cathy Newman / Angers Journal, June 15, 2021
STEPPING OUT OF THE SHADOWS
Looking at it from a certain perspective, John N. Maclean was a successful writer long before his famous father, Norman Maclean, made his mark on American literature.
By Jim Hepworth / Big Sky Journal, June 8, 2021
John Maclean’s ‘Home Waters’ matches well with his father’s classic, ‘A River Runs Through It’
John Maclean, the son of Norman Maclean, wrote “Home Waters,” which is a worthy non-fiction companion to his father’s classic, “A River Runs Through It.”
By Dale Bowman / Chicago Sun-Times, June 5, 2021
The backstory for ‘A River Runs Through It’ has arrived, 45 years later
45 years later, John Maclean has written a charming companion to his father’s classic, with more family lore, fly-fishing and moments of ecstatic communion.
By Nick Ehli / The Washington Post, June 3, 2021
Interview with John N. Maclean: Author of “Home Waters,” a New Companion Book to “A River Runs Through It”
The author discusses the inspiration behind his new memoir, and its connection his father's book, which took the fly-fishing world by storm
By Colin Kearns / Field & Stream, June 2, 2021
A Younger Maclean Returns to Where the River Still Runs
In his sixth book, John Norman Maclean offers a tender tribute to his famous fly-fishing father, to his deep sense of family, the passage of time, and the virtues of both patience and restlessness. Along the way, we learn of fishing rods, matching flies to hatch, and landing trout. Precision counts but so does awe. Sunlight dances atop waters even as the day ebbs.
By Lloyd Green / Gotham Canoe, June 1, 2021
Summer Reading: The Great Outdoors
True stories of adventures (and misadventures) in the woods and on the water, and a runner’s life on the move.
“Home Waters” details the history of the family, the area’s geology, the ancient trail through the Blackfoot Valley that the Indians followed to hunt the buffalo in the plains. There is a host of characters who vibrate to a different frequency than most of us.
By Bill Heavey / The Wall Street Journal, May 26, 2021
New & Noteworthy, From Slave Traders to the Savoy Hotel
HOME WATERS: A Chronicle of Family and a River, by John N. Maclean. (Custom House, $25.99.) Maclean’s father, Norman, wrote the classic novella “A River Runs Through It.” This memoir is an ode to its inspirations.
The New York Times, May 25, 2021
Home Waters by John N Maclean: The story of a family and their bond with Montana's Blackfoot River
Publishing just ahead of Father’s Day, this handsomely designed book will make the perfect gift and readers will find something to relate to – from the importance of family – to a love of the natural world.
By Dan Tye / Adventure 52, May 24, 2021
We’re proud and excited to share with you the cover of our Summer 2021 issue!
It’s the 45th Anniversary of Norman Maclean’s classic A River Runs Through It - and we’ve got great content for you, from an excerpt from John Norman Maclean’s book about his father to a look at the conservation of the Blackfoot River, from an analysis of Maclean’s writing about landscapes to the history of fly fishing, we can’t wait to share these pieces with you.
Distinctly Montana, May 12, 2021
Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River
Maclean (Fire on the Mountain) offers a lyrical love letter to Montana’s Blackfoot River, fishing, and his storied family in this captivating memoir.
“Fans of his father’s novella will relish the details that served as its inspiration and are here rendered in Maclean’s sharp yet poetic prose as tribute to a ‘pantheon of notable family fishers.’ This richly observed narrative is sure to reel readers in.”
Publishers Weekly, April 26, 2021
HOME WATERS - A CHRONICLE OF FAMILY AND A RIVER
A moving memoir of a family’s love affair with the Blackfoot River in Montana, made famous by A River Runs Through It, the novella written by Maclean’s father, Norman.
“Lovers of literature and nature will be captivated by this heartfelt tribute to place and family.”
Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review), March 15, 2021