James Oliver Curwood Books In Order

Publication Order of Kazan and Baree Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Collections

James Oliver Curwood was a literary fiction author from Owosso, Michigan. He was born to James Moran Curwood a cobbler and his wife Abigail Curwood. When his father’s business collapsed, the family relocated to Erie, County Ohio, where his father found a job picking stones on a farm. According to James, this was a critical time in his life as it helped build his character. It was also in Ohio that at the tender age of nine he began writing stories. When he turned thirteen, the family went back to the familiar setting of Owosso and the budding author would attend high school there until the tenth grade. But he found his classes so boring that he spent so much time outside of class than inside it that he was eventually expelled. While he never did complete high school, he took his exams and was admitted to study journalism at the English Department of the University of Michigan in 1998. Two years later, he got tired of studying and quit when he got a job on the “Detroit News-Tribune,” where he was a reporter. Earning eight dollars a week, he was charged with reporting on funerals. It was not long before he was out of a job for wrongly reporting a story. He then found a job working for a pharmaceutical company and was earning $50 a month, which he did for several years until the “Detroit News-Tribune” rehired him on $18 a week. He left the paper in 1907 having risen to the rank of assistant editor, to go become a professional author.

Oliver Curwood’s began writing and publishing his very first stories as a teen though he never got paid for any of his writings for a long time. “Gray Goose” was the first company that ever paid him anything for his stories as he got $5 for his short piece “Across the Range.” He went on to write tons of short stories and had more than thirty novels published in his lifetime. His debut novel was the 1907 published “Commerce on the Great Lakes” which was a popular novel though it was not until “The River’s End” was published in 1919 that he sold more than 100,000 copies of a single title. Reviewers have called his writing melodramatic pieces with clear definitions of wrong and right. Still, the novels were so popular that they were later adapted into movies and translated into several languages across the world. As a nature lover, Curwood loved exploring the outdoors and for nearly two decades he spent much of his time in the Canadian Northwest, writing, exploring, and building log cabins. His experiences in the outdoors surrounding would be a critical component of his writings. As for his writing habits, there was no place where he could not write as he could be found writing at home, in his log cabins, under a tree in Owosso, and at his small castle looking studio. In his studio, he has entertained all manner of guests including movie producers. The small studio was left to the City of Owosso when James died. It is now a museum that has the memorabilia and artifacts that concern the life and times of the great author.

As for his personal life, James Oliver Curwood got married to Cora Leon Johnson in 1900 and their union produced two children before they got divorced eight years later. He would then get married to Ethel Greenwood, and together they had James Jr. When he was not writing his novels, Curwood was a keen hunter and hunted for up to a decade before his demise. However, he had changed up several years before death and become a champion for wild things after a dangerous encounter with a bear while he was out hunting. He came to believe in and actively campaigned for the conservation of the natural resources of Michigan. He would later serve in the Michigan Conservation Commission and played a critical role in the planning and construction of a prominent conservation club in the state. While he had planned to live to be 100 years old by adopting a vegetarian diet with no liquor, tea coffee, or meat and regular exercise thrown into the mix, he died in 1927 aged 49.

James Oliver Curwood’s “The Wolf Hunters” is set in early 1900s Canada. It is the story of a Native American boy that had made friends with an American boy. The American had traveled to the Canadian wilderness to trap and hunt with the native boy in the hopes that he could use his hobby to earn some money to help his ailing mother. They engage a Native American guide and spend several weeks in an out of the way log cabin from where they periodically venture out to hunt. It is a harsh winter and they not only have to deal with the elements but also watch out for unfriendly and restive tribes in the vicinity. James writes beautiful descriptions of life in the wilderness and of nature, which makes for quite an enjoyable story. Things get interesting when the three boys and their guide find some bodies in a deserted cabin leading to even more adventure. There is a hint of possible danger as they are stalked by wild animals. There is also a touch of romance and a search for gold.

“The Danger Trail” by James Oliver Curwood is the story of one young man that had worked up the ranks from messenger boy to become one of the top engineers at his company in Chicago. But now he is supposed to go to the wilderness of northern Canada and supervise a railroad building project. The two engineers that had previously been working on the project had been involved in bizarre accidents that they were so afraid and had immediately left as soon as he arrived. An elusive and beautiful young woman kept telling him that he needed to leave immediately as his life was in danger in Canada. He had very many dangerous situations that he was not sure if he would make it out of Canada alive but he is a magnificent fighter and he takes a great many chances and risks to make for a great story. But figuring out why he is being targeted or why his fellow engineers had been targeted is not that easy.

James Oliver Curwood’s “The Honor of the Big Snows” is a novel set in the wild north of Canada. The lead is Melisse Cummins, a woman who lays dying on her bed while the aurora is crackling above her head late at night. She calls out to her husband and tells him that she can hear someone playing music but he tells her it must be the sound of the aurora in the heavens above. But as time ticks away, Jan Thoreau a fourteen-year-old boy stumbles into the cabin and it is clear that he is starving given that he almost immediately asks for food in exchange for playing his violin music. Melisse’s husband obliges and the boy plays his violin accompanying the woman right to the edge of the afterlife, where she dies in peace. She had left behind a small baby and John asks the teenager to stay behind to help with rearing the child and help out with tasks around the home in exchange for food and a place to live. But Jan has a horrible secret hidden in the papers inside his violin that often comes back to haunt him at the most unexpected of times.