1913-1984 · American author from the Oklahoma Ozarks, writer of Where the Red Fern Grows
About Wilson Rawls
Wilson Rawls (1913–1984) was born in Scraper, Oklahoma, in the Ozark hill country of northeastern Oklahoma, and had little formal schooling; his mother taught him at home, and he later said that reading Jack London made him want to write. He worked for years as a carpenter and laborer across the country and later at a defense installation in Idaho. Before marrying Sophie Styczinski in 1958 he burned his unpublished manuscripts; with her encouragement he rewrote his boyhood story, which became Where the Red Fern Grows. His second novel, Summer of the Monkeys, appeared in 1976. He died in Marshfield, Wisconsin.
Where the Red Fern Grows is narrated by Billy Colman, now a grown man in a town far from the Ozarks. Walking home from work one evening, he rescues an old redbone hound from a pack of town dogs, feeds it and lets it go home, and the encounter brings back the story of his boyhood.