Author. A Pulitzer Prize recipient, he is best remembered for his fictional books that dealt with life on the American frontier in various periods. The son of a Lutheran minister, he grew up in several small central Pennsylvania mining towns, where he encountered descendants of pioneers from the 18th and 19th centuries who shared family stories that would later inspire him to write historical fiction set on changing American frontiers. He attended local public schools, graduating from high school at age 15. When he was 19, he began working as an editor of a local weekly newspaper, the Patton, Pennsylvania Courier. In 1911 he moved to Cleveland, Ohio and worked as the private secretary to a wealthy manufacturing family. He then worked at a small publishing company, founded a juvenile magazine, and started writing short stories. His "Brothers of No Kin" was published in Forum magazine and it made the "Roll of Honor for 1914" of American stories by Edward J. O'Brien, editor of the Best Short Stories of 1915. In 1928 he moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico on account of his wife's health and five years later they returned to live in his hometown of Pine Grove, Pennsylvania. He continued to write short stories and in 1936 he published his first successful book "Early Americans and Other Stories," followed by "The Sea of Grass" (1936), that won him a National Book Award nomination in 1937, and was adapted into a 1947 film by the same name, starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. During this period he also published the novels of his Ohio frontier trilogy, "The Trees" (1940), "The Fields" (1946) for which he won the 1947 Ohioana Book Award, and "The Town" (1950) that won him the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. In 1950 his short story "Doctor Hanray's Second Chance" was published in The Saturday Evening Post. His other works include "Tacey Cromwell" (1942), "The Light in the Forest' (1953), "The Lady" (1957), "The Waters of Kronos (Chronos) (1960), "The Awakening land' (1966), "A Country of Strangers" (1966), and "The Aristocrat" (1968). His other lifetime honors include honorary Doctor of Letters degrees from Susquehanna University at Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania (1944), the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque (1958), and Lafayette College at Easton, Pennsylvania (1966), as well as an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Temple University at Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Lebanon Valley College at Anville, Pennsylvania. He died from a heart attack at the age of 78.