Jim Kjelgaard: "A Master Storyteller"

A Jim Kjelgaard Bibliography: The Books     Forest Patrol (Holiday House, 1941 / illustrated by Tony Palazzo) Rebel Siege (Holiday House, 1943 / illustrated by Charles Banks Wilson) Big Red (Holiday House, 1945 / illustrated by Bob Kuhn) Buckskin Brigade (Holiday House, 1947 / illustrated by Ralph Ray, Jr.) Snow Dog (Holiday House, 1948 / illustrated by Jacob Landau) Kalak of the Ice (Holiday House, 1949 / illustrated by Bob Kuhn) A Nose for Trouble (Holiday House, 1949) Wild Trek (Holiday House, 1950) Chip, the Dam Builder (Holiday House, 1950 / illustrated by Ralph Ray, Jr.) Irish Red (Holiday House, 1951) Fire-Hunter (Holiday House, 1951 / illustrated by Ralph Ray, Jr.) The Explorations of Père Marquette (Random House, 1951) Trailing Trouble (Holiday House, 1951) The Spell of the White Sturgeon (Dodd, Mead, 1953) Outlaw Red (Holiday House, 1953) The Coming of the Mormons (Random House, 1953) Cracker Barrel Trouble Shooter (Dodd, Mead, 1954) Haunt Fox (Holiday

  1238 Palo Verde Drive in Phoenix, Arizona, was Jim Kjelgaard’s home from about 1952 until his death on July 12, 1959. Kjelgaard had been suffering from back pain, which was a lifelong ailment, and what his daughter, Karen, called “incipient arthritis” and so for health reasons the family moved to Arizona from their home in Thiensville, Wisconsin. Thiensville was a small farming community north of Milwaukee and quite close to Lake Michigan.     Kjelgaard had a small office in their Phoenix home and wrote many of his best-known novels there, including, Lion Hound (1955), Desert Dog (1956), Wolf Brother (1957), Stormy (1959), and his two adult novels, The Lost Wagon (1955) and The Land is Bright (1958). Karen, in an essay, wrote: “As I grew up in Phoenix, I became more aware of how hard my father worked. It was not unusual for him to spend the entire day in his office, typing with two fingers on his old manual typewriter, then eat supper and go back to writing.” She said th