There they meet Long Bow, a regular at the bar, and Old Rawhide, the town whore. As soon as he can, Neal tries to sneak off to a bar, and Norman goes with him, since Jessie has asked him to keep an eye on her brother. Paul had gotten into a fight with a man who had insulted the girl he was with, a part-Native American woman whom Norman calls “Mo-nah-se-tah.” Norman drives them home, and then drives back to Wolf Creek himself, trying to figure out how he might be able to help Paul.Ī few days later Neal arrives on the train wearing two sweaters and carrying a monogrammed suitcase-certainly not a regular sight in Wolf Creek, Montana. Still, Paul regains the upper hand when they’re fishing, as Norman admires his technique of “shadow casting.” Norman stays with Paul for the night, but Paul goes out on the town, and Norman later gets a call in the middle of the night to come down to the jail. On the way Paul tells Norman about getting into a car crash (probably while drunk) and of the fine he’ll have to pay-he tells it as a joke, but Norman isn’t sure how seriously to take it. The two brothers go fishing together the next morning. Neither Norman nor Paul like Neal, whom they consider an outsider and a failed Montanan, but they love Florence, so they agree to fish on the Elkhorn with Neal. Norman runs into Paul outside a bar, though it’s not yet noon. Norman’s mother-in-law, Florence, has just told Norman that Jessie’s brother Neal will be arriving shortly from the West Coast, and she’d love for him to fish with Norman and Paul. In the summer of 1937, when the bulk of the novella takes place, Paul is living in Helena, while Norman lives with his wife Jessie’s family in Wolf Creek. He becomes a newspaper reporter in Helena, the capital of Montana. Paul has come to be the expert fisherman among the two, and his greatest goal is to not let work interfere with his fishing. Norman spends his teenage summers working for the United States Forest Service, while Paul is a lifeguard, giving him time to fish in the evenings. From a young age, he is incredibly stubborn, and enjoys betting on anything-as he gets older, he begins to gamble. Norman and Paul only fight once, and when their mother tries to separate them, she falls down, and the two are chastened into never fighting again. Their family is close-knit, and somewhat suspicious of the outside world. But their father also introduces them to the complex, intricate art of fishing, in which one must learn to read the river and attempt to listen to its words. Norman and his brother, Paul, spend much of their time out of school in church services and studying the Bible.

A River Runs Through It begins with the narrator, Norman Maclean, describing what it was like to grow up in Missoula, Montana, as the son of a Scottish Presbyterian minister who holds two things sacred: God and fly-fishing.

A river runs through it paul