Shepherd of the Hills

Originally published in 1907, The Shepherd of the Hills is Harold Bell Wright's most famous work. In The Shepherd of the Hills, Wright spins a tale of universal truths across the years to the modern-day reader. His Eden in the Ozarks has a bountiful share of life's enchantments, but is not without its serpents. While Wright rejoices in the triumphs, grace, and dignity of his characters, he has not naively created a pastoral fantasyland where the pure at heart are spared life's struggles and pains. Refusing to yield to the oft-indulged temptation of painting for the reader the simple life of country innocents, Wright forthrightly shows the passions and the life-and-death struggles that go on even in the fairest of environments that man invades. The shepherd, an elderly, mysterious, learned man, escapes the buzzing restlessness of the city to live in the backwoods neighborhood of Mutton Hollow in the Ozark hills. There he encounters Jim Lane, Grant Matthews, Sammy, Young Matt, and other residents of the village, and gradually learns to find a peace about the losses he has borne and has yet to bear. Through the shepherd and those around him, Wright assembles here a gentle and utterly masterful commentary on strength and weakness, failure and success, tranquility and turmoil, and punishment and absolution. This tale of life in the Ozarks continues to draw thousands of devotees to outdoor performances in Branson, Missouri, where visitors can also see the cabin where the real Old Matt and Aunt Mollie lived.

About the Author :
Harold Bell Wright (1872-1944) was a bestselling American writer of fiction, essays, and nonfiction during the first half of the twentieth century. Although mostly forgotten or ignored after the middle of the century, he is said to have been the first American writer to sell a million copies of a novel and the first to make $1 million from writing fiction. More than twenty-one movies were made or claimed to have been made from his stories, including Gary Cooper's first major movie, The Winning of Barbara Worth, and the John Wayne film The Shepherd of the Hills. The author's religious practices first led him to write, and all of his books address particular problems. Behind all of his works lies the simple desire to write about the goodness of mankind. Robin Field is the AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator of numerous audiobooks, as well as an award-winning actor, singer, writer, and lyricist whose career has spanned six decades. He has starred on and off Broadway, headlined at Carnegie Hall, authored numerous musical reviews, and hosted or performed on a number of television and radio programs over the years.