A short life of the author
Woodrow Wilson Rawls (24 September 1913 – 16 December 1984) was an American author whose novel Where the Red Fern Grows (1961) — the story of a boy named Billy Colman and his two redbone coonhounds, Old Dan and Little Ann, in the Ozark Mountains of northeastern Oklahoma — has become one of the most beloved, most widely assigned, and most emotionally devastating children’s novels in American literature. The book has been in continuous print for over sixty years, has sold millions of copies, and has made generations of young readers weep with a ferocity that many adults still remember decades later.
Life
Rawls was born in Scraper, Oklahoma, in the Ozark hill country that provides the setting of his fiction. He grew up in rural poverty — his family lived in areas so remote that there was no school for him to attend. He was largely self-taught, learning to read from his mother, who read him books by Jack London and other adventure writers. He fell in love with London’s dog stories — The Call of the Wild, White Fang — and decided as a child that he would write a book about a boy and his dogs.
He spent his young adult years as an itinerant worker — construction, carpentry, logging — throughout the American West and Latin America. He wrote constantly but secretly, filling notebooks with stories and drafts that he was too embarrassed to show anyone. When he married Sophie Ann Styczinski in 1958, he told her about his manuscripts. She encouraged him to pursue publication and typed his handwritten drafts.
The manuscript of Where the Red Fern Grows was serialised in the Saturday Evening Post in 1961 under the title “The Hounds of Youth” and published as a book by Doubleday later that year. It was initially a modest seller but became, through word of mouth and classroom adoption, one of the bestselling children’s novels of the century.
Where the Red Fern Grows (1961)
The novel is set in the Ozark Mountains during the Depression and tells the story of Billy Colman, a boy who saves for two years to buy two coonhound puppies — Old Dan and Little Ann — and trains them to hunt raccoons. The novel follows their adventures in the woods: the training, the hunting, the treeing of coons, the rivalries with other hunters, and the increasingly deep bond between the boy and his dogs.
The novel’s power lies in its directness and its emotional honesty. Rawls writes from intimate knowledge of the Ozark landscape, hunting culture, and the bond between a boy and his animals. The prose is simple — almost plain — but it serves the material perfectly: the reader is drawn completely into Billy’s world.
The novel’s ending — in which Old Dan dies defending Billy from a mountain lion, and Little Ann, unable to live without her companion, lies on Old Dan’s grave and dies of grief — is one of the most heartbreaking passages in children’s literature. The red fern that grows between the dogs’ graves — according to an Indian legend, a red fern marks a spot sacred to God — provides a consolation that does not diminish the grief.
Two film adaptations were made (1974 and 2003), though neither fully captures the novel’s emotional power.
Summer of the Monkeys (1976)
Rawls’s second and final novel tells the story of Jay Berry Lee, a boy in the Ozarks who discovers a group of escaped circus monkeys and attempts to capture them for the reward money. The novel is lighter and funnier than Where the Red Fern Grows — the monkeys’ tricks and Jay Berry’s exasperated pursuit provide genuine comedy — but it shares the first novel’s deep knowledge of rural life and its emotional warmth. The novel explores the relationship between desire (Jay Berry wants a pony and a .22 rifle) and selflessness (his sister Daisy needs an operation for her crippled leg), resolving with characteristic generosity.
Legacy
Rawls spent his later years visiting schools, where he told the story of his own life — the self-taught boy who became a writer — and read passages from his books. He was, by all accounts, a modest, warm man who was genuinely moved by the effect his books had on young readers.
Collecting Rawls
Where the Red Fern Grows (1961, Doubleday) in first edition with dust jacket is scarce and sought, bringing $200–$1,000. Later printings are common. Summer of the Monkeys (1976, Doubleday) brings $30–$100 in first edition. Signed copies are rare.