Kirk Munroe was the author of more than thirty factual and detailed adventure tales for boys. Many of his books are set in Florida, and the rest have wild and mysterious settings, including Alaska, California, Arizona, and Japan. Of writers prior to 1900, Munroe wrote the finest and most realistic, if somewhat moralistic, adventure books for boys. Although he was popular until the early 1900s, interest in his books faded undeservedly in subsequent years.

His life was full of adventure. Born not far from Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, to Charles W. and Susan M. Hall Munroe, he was brought up in a frontier post at Fort Howard, Wisconsin. His family moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, and there Munroe persuaded his parents to let him leave home when he was sixteen to return West to the frontier town of Kansas City. He worked with a surveying party on the Santa Fe...