Norman Fitzroy Maclean (December 23, 1902August 2, 1990) was a Scottish-American professor at the University of Chicago who became, following his retirement, a major figure in American literature. Maclean is best known for his collection of novellas A River Runs Through It and Other Stories (1976) and the creative nonfiction book Young Men and Fire (1992). Family origins In his novella, A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean alleged that his paternal ancestors were from the Isle of Mull, in the Inner Hebrides of Scotland. According to his son, however, their paternal ancestors were Gaelic speaking Presbyterians and from the Isle of Coll, which is "located about seven miles west of the Clan MacLean stronghold, the Isle of Mull". The author's great-grandfather, Laughlan Maclean, was a carpenter by trade and emigrated to Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in 1821, before settling on a homestead in Pictou County. Laughlan Maclean was accompanied by his wife, Elizabeth Campbell. Norman's father, Rev. John Norman Maclean, was born to Laughlan's son Norman and his wife Mary MacDonald on the family farm in the Canadian Gaelic-speaking community of Marshy Hope, Pictou County, Nova Scotia on July 28, 1862. Showing signs of academic promise, John Norman Maclean trained for the ministry first at Pictou Academy, where academic records refer to him as "J.N. Mclean of Glenbard", a community famous as the last home and burial place of the Canadian Gaelic poet John MacLean, the former Chief Bard () to the Chief of Clan MacLean of Coll, who remains a major figure in Scottish Gaelic literature. John Maclean completed his education at Dalhousie College in Halifax and at Manitoba College in Winnipeg. While riding circuit in the summers among the many small Presbyterian congregations in the pioneer communities of the Pembina Valley Region of Manitoba, MacLean met his future wife, an English-Canadian schoolmarm named Clara Davidson. Clara's father, John Davidson, was a Presbyterian immigrant from Northern England, and had settled first near Argenteuil, Laurentides, Quebec, where his daughter Clara had been born. Finding the farmland there to be poor, however, John Davidson and his family had moved west by oxcart and settled on a homestead at New Haven, near Manitou, Manitoba. During their courtship, Clara often accompanied John while he was riding circuit. In 1893, John Norman Maclean completed advanced studies at San Francisco Theological Seminary in San Anselmo, California and was ordained as a Presbyterian minister. John