Norman Fitzroy Maclean was born in Clarinda, Iowa, on 23 December 1902 to John Norman Maclean, a Presbyterian minister originally from Scotland, and Clara Davidson Maclean. The family moved to Missoula, Montana, in 1909. John Maclean taught Norman and his younger brother Paul at home, employing a strict regimen of readings from the Bible and classical literature and making rigorous writing assignments. In a 1984 interview in Tri-Quarterly, Maclean described the lessons as “very harsh”:
He put me in a room across from his, where he worked every morning on his sermons. . . . I would write and three-quarters of an hour later I would bring it in to him and he'd tear it apart and say take it back and write it half the length. So, I'd take it back with tears in my eyes. It was rough. . . . I'd give it back to him, and he'd say, “O.K., now do it half as long again,” so I'd take it back and do it again and by that time it would be a quarter of twelve, and he'd say, now throw it away.
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