Margaret Craven

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Margaret Craven (March 13, 1901 - July 19, 1980) was an American author. Born in Helena, Montana, she grew up in Sacramento, California.

After graduating from Stanford University, she worked for a time as a journalist. By 1930, she was writing short stories that she sold to a number of national magazines. She continued writing and publishing short stories for more than three decades and, in the 1960s, wrote about the plight of the Kwakwaka'wakw (Kwakiutl) First Nations people of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada.

This experience led to her novel I Heard the Owl Call My Name which told of a young vicar who learns about the meaning of life when he is sent to an aboriginal parish in British Columbia. First published in Canada in 1967, the book was not published in the United States until 1973. Released to wide acclaim, I Heard the Owl Call My Name reached No.1 on the New York Times bestseller list. In the year of its American release, the book was adapted to the screen by Gerald Di Pego as a CBS television movie of the same title.

Bibliography:

• I Heard the Owl Call My Name (1967)
• Walk Gently This Good Earth (1977)
• Again Calls the Owl (1980)
• The Home Front (1981)