The very first pages of Old Yeller identify the setting as Salt Lick, Texas, hill country six hundred miles south of Abilene, Kansas, during the late 1860s.

This immediate and specific attention to setting suggests that the book is a work of regionalism, a kind of literature that vividly and accurately depicts a specific setting. The details portrayed in works of regionalism include descriptions of nature as well as the special customs, values, and even speech of the people in that setting. In such works, setting is such an important part of the story that the reader cannot imagine the events happening anywhere else.

Usually, regionalism rings true only when the author has actually lived in that special time and place. Old Yeller, though, is an important exception. Fred Gipson grew up in Texas, but he depicts a time forty years before he was born. As the dedication...