Jim Kjelgaard

Jim Kjelgaard (1910-1959) was an American author best known for adventure and animal stories for young readers. Born in New York City and raised on a farm in Pennsylvania's Allegheny Mountains, he drew on a childhood spent hunting, fishing, and trapping for the wilderness settings of his fiction. Fire-Hunter, published in 1951, departs from his usual naturalist settings for prehistory, following a young hunter in a Stone Age tribe who invents the bow and arrow and is exiled by his people for defying tradition; the novel was later cited by science-fiction editor and publisher Jim Baen as one of his own formative influences. A sequel, The Hunter Returns, was written decades later by David Drake using Kjelgaard's characters. Kjelgaard wrote dozens of books over a prolific career cut short by his death at 48.