Other editions of book Back to God's Country and Other Stories

Back to God's Country and Other Stories by James Oliver Curwood is a classic collection of nature stories including Back to God's Country, The Yellow-Back, The Fiddling Man and L'ange.James Oliver "Jim" Curwood (June 12, 1878 – August 13, 1927) was an American action-adventure writer and conservationist. His books were often based on adventures set in the Yukon or Alaska and ranked among the top-ten best sellers in the United States in the early 1920s, according to Publishers Weekly. At least eighteen motion pictures have been based on or directly inspired by his novels and short stories; one was produced in three versions from 1919 to 1953. At the time of his death, Curwood was the highest paid (per word) author in the world. Curwood was born in Owosso, Michigan, the youngest of four children. Attending local schools, Curwood left high school before graduation. He passed the entrance exam to the University of Michigan and was allowed to enroll in the English department, where he studied journalism.After two years, Curwood quit college to become a reporter, moving to Detroit for work. In 1900, he sold his first story, while working for the Detroit News-Tribune. By 1909 he had saved enough money to travel to the Canadian northwest, a trip that inspired his wilderness adventure stories. Because his novels sold well, Curwood could afford to return to Owosso and live there. He traveled to the Yukon and Alaska for several months each year for more inspiration. He wrote more than thirty adventure books.By 1922, Curwood had become very wealthy from the success of his writing. He fulfilled a childhood fantasy by building Curwood Castle in Owosso. Constructed in the style of an 18th-century French chateau, the estate overlooked the Shiawassee River. In one of the homes' two large turrets, Curwood set up his writing studio. He also owned a camp in a remote area in Baraga County, Michigan, near the Huron Mountains, as well as a cabin in Roscommon, Michigan.Curwood was an avid hunter in his youth; however, as he grew older, he became an advocate of environmentalism. He was appointed to the Michigan Conservation Commission in 1927.[3] The change in his attitude toward wildlife is expressed in a quote from The Grizzly King: "The greatest thrill is not to kill but to let live."In 1927, while on a fishing trip in Florida, Curwood was bitten on the thigh by what was believed to have been a spider, and he had an immediate allergic reaction. Health problems related to the bite escalated over the next few months as an infection developed. He died in Owosso at the age of 49, and was interred in Oak Hill Cemetery there in a family plot.Curwood's adventure writing followed in the tradition of Jack London. Curwood set many of his works in the wilds of the Great Northwest and often used animals as lead characters (Kazan; Baree, Son of Kazan, The Grizzly King, and Nomads of the North). Many of Curwood's adventure novels also feature romance as primary or secondary plot consideration. This approach gave his work broad commercial appeal; his novels ranked on several best-seller lists in the early 1920s. His most successful work was his 1920 novel, The River's End. The book sold more than 100,000 copies and was the fourth best-selling title of the year in the United States, according to Publishers Weekly Curwood's short stories and other pieces were published in various literary and popular magazines throughout his career. His bibliography includes more than 200 such articles, short stories, and serializations. His work was also published in Canada and the United Kingdom. Some of his books were translated into French, Italian, Russian, Spanish, Dutch, Swedish, Finnish and Polish, and published in those respective countries.Curwood's final novel, Green Timber, was nearly finished at the time of his death. It was completed by Dorothea A. Bryant and published in 1930.

When Shan Tung, the long-cued Chinaman from Vancouver, started up the Frazer River in the old days when the Telegraph Trail and the headwaters of the Peace were the Meccas of half the gold-hunting population of British Columbia, he did not foresee tragedy ahead of him. He was a clever man, was Shan Tung, a cha-sukeed, a very devil in the collecting of gold, and far-seeing. But he could not look forty years into the future, and when Shan Tung set off into the north, that winter, he was in reality touching fire to the end of a fuse that was to burn through four decades before the explosion came. With Shan Tung went Tao, a Great Dane. The Chinaman had picked him up somewhere on the coast and had trained him as one trains a horse. Tao was the biggest dog ever seen about the Height of Land, the most powerful, and at times the most terrible. Of two things Shan Tung was enormously proud in his silent and mysterious oriental way—of Tao, the dog, and of his long, shining cue which fell to the crook of his knees when he let it down. It had been the longest cue in Vancouver, and therefore it was the longest cue in British Columbia. The cue and the dog formed the combination which set the forty-year fuse of romance and tragedy burning. Shan Tung started for the El Dorados early in the winter, and Tao alone pulled his sledge and outfit. It was no more than an ordinary task for the monstrous Great Dane, and Shan Tung subserviently but with hidden triumph passed outfit after outfit exhausted by the way. He had reached Copper Creek Camp, which was boiling and frothing with the excitement of gold-maddened men, and was congratulating himself that he would soon be at the camps west of the Peace, when the thing happened. A drunken Irishman, filled with a grim and unfortunate sense of humor, spotted Shan Tung's wonderful cue and coveted it. Wherefore there followed a bit of excitement in which Shan Tung passed into his empyrean home with a bullet through his heart, and the drunken Irishman was strung up for his misdeed fifteen minutes later. Tao, the Great Dane, was taken by the leader of the men who pulled on the rope. Tao's new master was a "drifter," and as he drifted, his face was always set to the north, until at last a new humor struck him and he turned eastward to the Mackenzie. As the seasons passed, Tao found mates along the way and left a string of his progeny behind him, and he had new masters, one after another, until he was grown old and his muzzle was turning gray. And never did one of these masters turn south with him. Always it was north, north with the white man first, north with the Cree, and then wit h the Chippewayan, until in the end the dog born in a Vancouver kennel died in an Eskimo igloo on the Great Bear. But the breed of the Great Dane lived on. Here and there, as the years passed, one would find among the Eskimo trace-dogs, a grizzled-haired, powerful-jawed giant that was alien to the arctic stock, and in these occasional aliens ran the blood of Tao, the Dane.

How is this book unique?Font adjustments & biography includedUnabridged (100% Original content)IllustratedAbout Back to God's Country and Other Stories by James Oliver CurwoodAfter her father is killed by an outlaw, Dolores marries Peter. While at sea in the Arctic, Dolores meets the ship's captain -- the man who killed her father! The captain causes an 'accident' to happen to Peter, so Dolores is all alone and defenseless as they drop anchor in a remote harbor. At the height of his literary career, Michigan-born author James Oliver Curwood was reported to be the highest-paid writer in the world. The collection Back to God's Country and Other Stories brings together some of Curwood's most memorable shorter pieces, many of which are set in the rugged wilderness of northwest Canada.