As soon as he could fashion letters, Wilson Rawls began writing on any smooth surface he could find--the sandy bank of a river, a dusty country road. Many years later, his work found its way into print. Two successful novels, Where the Red Fern Grows and Summer of the Monkeys, established an enormous following for Rawls. Perhaps it was the shape of Rawls's life, the struggle to achieve his literary ambition and his ultimate success, that make his work resonate with readers and critics alike. What he lacked in formal education Rawls more than made up for in sheer drive and love of writing; grit, tenacity, and patient determination finally overcame the obstacles in his way, to the pleasure of his fans.

The rural descriptions in Rawls's work are all from his own experience. Scraper, where he was born, is a small town in northeastern Oklahoma. Such a...