Horace McCoy rose to fame during the Depression with a slim volume called They Shoot Horses, Don't They" (1935) and disappeared into obscurity in Hollywood. He is virtually unknown today even though in 1969 Warner Brothers released an unforgettable movie version of this first novel, starring Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin, and Susannah York, and directed by Sydney Pollack.

Horace Stanley McCoy was the firstborn and the only son to survive infancy of James Harris McCoy and Nancye Holt McCoy. James McCoy had been a country schoolteacher before he became a railroad conductor. After the birth of his son on 14 April 1897 in Pegram, Tennessee, he took a freight-house job and moved his family to Nashville around 1899. Nancye Holt McCoy had been a brilliant student, and she instilled in her son her own zest for learning. The family had only modest means and so, at the age of six, McCoy started supplementing...