- Harvey Fergusson
Harvey Fergusson (born
Albuquerque ,New Mexico ,28 January 1890 , died Berkeley,California ,27 August 1971 ), was an American writer.Life and works
Fergusson grew up in Albuquerque, then attended
Washington and Lee University in Lexington,Virginia , graduating in 1911. Soon after leaving college, he took a job as a staff reporter for theWashington, D.C. "Herald". After brief stints with newspapers in Savannah, Georgia and Richmond,Virginia , he returned to DC and joined the Washington bureau of theChicago "Record-Herald". He left the paper in 1915 to work as an assistant to the columnist Frederic Haskin. He married for the first time in 1919 — the marriage ended in divorce a few years later. In 1923, he left journalism to devote himself full-time to writing.Fergusson's second novel, "Capitol Hill", drew heavily upon his experiences as a reporter. His protagonist, Ralph Dolan, works his way up through the newspaper trade, then switches to the business of
public relations andlobbying , ending as the top lobbyist of a large industry association.Virtually in parallel with "Capitol Hill," Fergusson wrote "The Blood of the Conquerors", the first of his historical novels set in New Mexico. "Blood" was also the first novel in a trilogy Fergusson titled, "Followers of the Sun". The other books in this trilogy were "In Those Days" and "Wolf Song".
"Wolf Song" is considered by most critics to be his best novel — indeed, some have called it the finest novel of the
American West . It tells the story of a mountain man, Sam Lash, loosely modelled onKit Carson . Fergusson married for the second time in 1927, the year of "Wolf Song's" publication, but his wife died of pneumonia before the year ended.He moved to
Hollywood and worked intermittently as a screenwriter, earning credits on "It Happened in Hollywood " (1937) and "Stand Up and Fight " (1939). His primary focus remained on novel-writing, although it would be over 20 years before he returned to the subject of the West's past. His two novels of the 1930s dealt with contemporary themes, and Fergusson also published two works of non-fiction, "Rio Grande" and "Modern Man: His Beliefs and Behavior".Fergusson moved to Berkeley in the early 1940s, where he wrote an autobiographical book, "Home in the West: An Inquiry into My Origins." He also returned to the subject of politics, this time as a work of non-fiction, "People and Power: A Study of Political Behavior in America."
His last two novels, "Grant of Kingdom" and "The Conquest of Don Pedro", dealt with earlier periods in the history of
New Mexico . Fergusson consciously sought to correct what he saw as the fundamental flaw in conventional Westerns: "... not that its stories are melodramatic but that its heroes and heroines are lifeless."Bibliography
* "The Blood of the Conquerors" (1921)
* "Capitol Hill" (1923)
* "Women and Wives" (1924)
* "Hot Saturday" (1926)
* "Wolf Song" (1927)
* "In Those Days" (1929)
* "Footloose McGarnigal" (1930)
* "Rio Grande" (1933)
* "Modern Man: His Belief and Behavior" (1936)
* "The Life of Riley" (1937)
* "Home in the West" (1945)
* "People and Power: A Study of Political Behavior in America" (1947)
* "Grant of Kingdom " (1950)
* "The Conquest of Don Pedro" (1955)
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