Where the Red Fern Grows is set in the Ozark Mountains on Cherokee land in northeastern Oklahoma during the Great Depression. Billy Coleman's father farms the land.

His grandfather, a driving force and constant source of encouragement to Billy, runs a country general store and mill. The store is a gathering place for the area's racoon hunters.

Their home is nestled deep in the heart of nature.

[The house] was in a beautiful valley far back in the rugged Ozarks. The country was new and sparsely settled. The land we lived on was Cherokee land, allotted to my mother because of the Cherokee blood that flowed in her veins. It lay in a strip from the foothills of the mountains to the banks of the Illinois River in northeastern Oklahoma. The land was rich, black, and fertile . . . [The log house was] nestled at the edge of the foothills...