Wilson Rawls

Wilson Rawls was born in the Oklahoma Ozarks and came of age during the Great Depression. The financial collapse forced his family to move westward in search of work. Rawls himself became a carpenter and lived an itinerant existence throughout North and South America, taking odd jobs and even serving time in prison. He wrote throughout his travels and eventually settled down in Idaho, where he married his wife and began turning his manuscripts into novels. Where the Red Fern Grows was published in 1961 to great acclaim—the semi-autobiographical novel is based on Rawls’s childhood roaming the Ozarks with his pet bluetick hound. Where the Red Fern Grows is Rawls’s most widely known work. Having sold well over seven million copies, it is popular reading for school-aged children and has been lauded with the Evansville Book Award, the Great Stone Face Award, and more accolades. Rawls is also the author of Summer of the Monkeys, which was published in 1976. Like Where the Red Fern Grows, Summer of the Monkeys also follows a young boy growing up in rural Oklahoma.