"The Writings of Norman Maclean: Seeking Truth amid Tragedy provides the first critical reassessment of Norman Maclean's work in fifteen years. In this study, Timothy P. Schilling focuses on Maclean's attempt-in A River Runs through It and Young Men and Fire-to come to grips with the tragic side of life. Running as a common thread through much of Maclean's writing, Schilling argues, is Maclean's desire to get at the ultimate meaning ("the truth") of the tragedies that have haunted him: namely, the 1938 death of his brother Paul and the 1949 death of thirteen fire fighters in Montana, the stories which lie behind the books that made Maclean famous. Ever open to scientific, literary, philosophical and theological ways of viewing reality, Maclean finds ambiguity, paradoxically, to be an essential tool for probing "the truth""--