Conrad Richter

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Richter, Conrad [Michael] (1890–1968), Pennsylvania‐born author, later long resident in New Mexico before returning to his native state. His novels include the trilogy The Trees (1940), about a rough, 18th‐century pioneering family in Ohio; The Fields (1946), concerning the family and the region during the Civil War era; and The Town (1950, Pulitzer Prize), on the later family, its pioneer spirit urbanized, torn between idealism and realism. His other novels include The Sea of Grass (1937), about an Eastern woman's life in the Southwest; Tacey Cromwell (1942), about a prostitute in early 20th‐century Arizona; The Free Man (1943), concerning the social rise of a German in colonial Philadelphia; Always Young and Fair (1947), about the destructiveness of an unhappy woman living in a Pennsylvania town; The Light in the Forest (1953), about a white boy captured by Delaware Indians, rescued, and then nostalgic for their way of life; The Lady (1957), set in New Mexico in the 1880s; The Waters of Kronos (1960), a novella of mysticism in which a man in old age returns as a stranger to his Pennsylvania hometown to see himself as a youth; A Simple Honorable Man (1962), treating the noble character of the father of the hero of The Waters of Kronos, a Lutheran minister who aids the poor miners of Pennsylvania; and The Grandfathers (1964), an easy, comic tale of western Maryland mountain people and the ways of their community. Early Americana (1936) collects stories of the Southwest, and The Rawhide Knot (1978) collects stories of marriages on the frontier. The Mountain on the Desert (1955) considers regionalism and writing in a mystical vein, and general views from his private notebooks appear in Writing To Survive (1988). His daughter Harvena edited Private Notebooks (1988).

Conrad Richter rĬk´tər , 1890–1968, American novelist, b. Pine Grove, Pa. After newspaper work in Pennsylvania and Ohio, he moved to New Mexico. Richter's novels treat the American frontier experience in terms of everyday life. His best-known works are the novels The Trees (1940), The Fields (1946), and The Town (1950; Pulitzer Prize), which comprise a trilogy. His other novels include The Sea of Grass (1937), The Light in the Forest (1953), The Lady (1957), and The Aristocrat (1968).