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.

Paul a river runs through it