John Norman Maclean

John Norman Maclean is a journalist and author who has written five books on fatal wildland fires and a memoir, Home Waters: A Chronicle of Family and a River (June 2021, published by HarperCollins). He is the son of Norman Maclean, author of A River Runs Through It and Young Men and Fire, and grandson of the minister John Norman Maclean. Biography John N. Maclean was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1943, the second of two children. He graduated from Shimer College in Mt. Carroll, Illinois. Maclean began his career in journalism in 1964 as a police reporter with the City News Bureau of Chicago. He went to work for the Chicago Tribune the following year. He married Frances Ellen McGeachie in 1968; they have two sons -- Daniel, a science teacher in Anchorage, Alaska, and John Fitzroy, a public defender for the state of Maryland.