One might think there are two novelists named Frederick John Niven: the Scots writer (after whom the Frederick Niven Literary Award is named) who penned a variety of historical romances and realistic, post-kailyard-school stories, and the Canadian author of westerns, reflective essays, descriptive verses, and a so-called "prairie trilogy." For Niven acquired two quite separate reputations. This was the plight of many an immigrant artist: to be rooted by tradition in one culture, by choice in another, and to be recognized in neither for the total body of work he produced. In Niven's case, nationalist critical practices in Canada and Scotland collided with his varied choice of setting and subject in his work (over thirty-seven books in all), which derived directly from his own itinerant life.

Niven was born on 31 March 1878, the youngest of three children, in Santiago, Chile, where his father was in the British consular service...