His novel
Mountain Man (1965) was the basis for Sydney Pollack's film Jeremiah
Johnson, nominated for a Golden Palm award at the 1972 Cannes Film
Festival. The Mothers: An American Saga of Courage told the story
of the Donner Party tragedy. His historical novel, Children of God,
tracing the history of the Mormons, won the 1939 Harper Prize in
Fiction. Tale of Valor is a novel recounting the Lewis and Clark
Expedition. God or Caesar? is his non-fiction book on how to write.
After
graduating from the University of Utah in 1920, Fisher acquired
a Master of Arts degree (1922) and a Ph.D. (1925) at the University
of Chicago. He was an assistant professor of English at the University
of Utah (1925-1928) and at New York University (1928-1931), where
he was friends with Thomas Wolfe. He also taught as a summer professor
at Montana State University (1932-1933). Between 1935 and 1939,
he was the director of the Idaho Writer's Project of the WPA,
writing several books about Idaho. He was also a newspaper columnist
for the Idaho Statesman and Idaho Statewide (which later became
the Intermountain Observer).
One
of his hobbies was house building, and he built his own home in
the Thousand Springs area of Idaho. He did the wiring, masonry,
carpentry and plumbing himself. His father Joe, a hunter, had
a working relationship with the Blackfeet Indians of the area.
Fisher had one child with his wife, Leona McMurtrey, who was born
September 10, 1917 and died September 8, 1924.
He
married his second wife, Margaret Trusler, in 1928. He married
his third wife, Opal Laurel Holmes, in 1940, and she was his co-author
on Gold Rushes and Mining Camps of the Early American West (1968).
Opal Fisher died in 1995, leaving $237,000 from her estate to
the University of Idaho for the creation of a humanities professorship.
To
write the Testament of Man series, Fisher read over 2000 books
on anthropology, history, psychology, theology and comparative
religion. When the series was reprinted by Pyramid Books as mass-market
paperbacks in 1960, it had an influence on DC Comics editor Joe
Orlando and the comic book Anthro, written and drawn by Howard
Post and edited by Orlando. |
