H. L. Davis

H. L. Davis (1894-1960), American novelist, who wrote about life in the American West, particularly Oregon, during the first part of the 20th century. In many of his works he explores conflicts involving settlers and Native Americans.

Harold Lenoir Davis was born near Roseburg, Oregon. He attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, briefly in 1917, but was forced to withdraw for financial reasons. As a soldier during World War I (1914-1918), he wrote poetry about his home state, some of which was published in the prestigious Poetry magazine in 1919.

Davis later wrote short stories for Collier's Weekly, and he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship to Mexico in 1932. In Mexico he started work on his first novel, Honey in the Horn (1935), about a teenager who searches for the meaning of life as he wanders through Oregon. The book won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1936, launching Davis's career as a fiction writer. The novel Winds of Morning (1952) is one of his most highly regarded works. The book tells of the quest of an Oregon deputy sheriff for love and acceptance in a community, as he investigates a murder and is guided by the wisdom of an old settler. Davis's stories are collected in Team Bells Woke Me and Other Stories (1953). In 1959 a collection of his essays and articles on the Pacific Northwest was published as Kettle of Fire.