Where the Red Fern Grows

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"Where the Red Fern Grows" is also a song from Sonic Youth (album).

**Title** **Where the Red Fern Grows**
Author	Wilson Rawls
Country	United States
Language	English
Genre(s)	Children's novel
Publisher	Doubleday
Released	1961
Media type	Hardcover (first edition )
ISBN	ISBN 0-440-22814-X

Where the Red Fern Grows is a 1961 novel by American author Wilson Rawls about a boy who acquires and trains two Redbone Coonhound hunting dogs. It has twice been made into a film — once in 1974 starring Stewart Peterson, and again in 2003 starring Joseph Ashton, Dabney Coleman, Ned Beatty, and Dave Matthews.

[edit] Plot summary

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

In the the opening scene of the novel, the main character, Billy Colman, is an older man, who is leaving work for the day. On his way home, he sees a dogfight - all the town dogs are attacking a obviously out-of-place redbone coonhound, who is fighting back valiantly. He steps in, scaring away the attackers, and coaxes the hound out. He sees that the hound is starving and dirty, and takes him home to feed and wash him. The dog leaves for his destination the next day, and Billy knows better than to stop him. Seeing a coonhound again makes Billy recall having two coonhounds as a boy. The remainder of the story is a flashback from his childhood.

Billy grew up in the Ozark Mountains on a little farm with his parents and three younger sisters . Billy's soul desire is to have a pair of coonhound dogs. He asks his parents for a pair of hunting hounds, but since the family is poor, all his father can offer him is a farm collie from next door's farm. Billy becomes physically sick for want of the dogs. Then he decides to earn the dogs himself after finding a magazine with a section that advertised dogs for sale. The magazine was discarded by fishermen. On the bank where they fish, Billy offers a prayer to God to help him get his dogs. Billy does odd jobs and sells food and bait to the fishermen to earn money. After two years, he earns enough; his grandfather orders the dogs. When the paper confirming the purchase comes back, Grandpa tells Billy that someone will bring him to town next week to fetch his pups. However, Billy is too excited and walks to town that very night to fetch his pups from the train station in Tahlequah. After a couple of misadventures in town, Billy manages to get his pups. He carries them home in a gunny sack. On the way home he stops by the fishermen's bank, where he had first said his prayer. He tries to think of names for his dogs, but cannot think of any. Finally, he takes a look around and sees that a fisherman had carved the names Dan and Ann on a nearby tree. Billy names his dogs Old Dan and Little Ann.

Billy realizes that Old Dan is the muscle of the team, since he is larger and more muscular. Little Ann was probably the runt of the litter, but she is a very bright dog. Billy trains his dogs with a coon skin after trapping one in a controversial method. He drags the coon skin along the ground to leave a scent, and he has his dogs follow the scent. He teaches them every trick he has ever heard of.

When hunting season comes, Billy is very excited and immediately starts out. His dogs rustle up a coon and manage to chase it up the tallest biggest tree in the forest, a sycamore. He knows that if he doesn't get the coon out of the tree his dogs will not trust him any more. He sets to work chopping down the tree. After a couple of days the tree still hasn't fallen, and he is ready to give up. Billy then prays to God to help him bring down the tree. After this prayer, a strange wind blows the tree down without even rustling the branches of other nearby trees. His dogs get the raccoon and Billy decides that the wind was an act of God.

Billy goes out hunting almost every night. That winter, the price of coon skins is high due to a surge in popularity of their fur in the use of coats. He brings the pelts to Grandpa's store to be sold. He gives all the money he earns to his parents. Billy does not care for it since he has his dogs. Together, he and Old Dan and Little Ann perform some amazing feats hunting coons in the Ozarks and earn not a little local fame.

After a while, two boys from the Pritchard family challenge Billy. They claim that in their region there is an old coon who can disappear, and that their blue tick hound has never managed to bring this coon down. They bet him two dollars that Old Dan and Little Ann could not manage to run down this coon. At first, Billy does not want to bet but Grandpa pushes him into it. Billy meets up with the Pritchard boys a day later to hunt the "ghost" coon. His dogs manage to tree the coon after a lot of clever tricks from the coon, but as the Pritchards promised, the coon disappears. The dogs are bewildered by this and, after a lot of searching, are ready to give up. Billy pays his bet. However, at the last minute, Little Ann catches the scent of the coon on the wind. It turns out that the coon's disappearance act was simple: he walked out to the end of a long branch and dropped down on to a fence post, which turned out to be hollow. Then he would hide in the hollow until the hunter(s) left. Little Ann figures this out, and they chase down the coon and Billy is about to kill the coon when he has a change of heart. He decides that he does not want to kill such a clever old coon. The Pritchard boys do not understand and call him a coward, but Billy does not change his mind. At this moment, the Pritchards' hunting hound walks up. The Pritchard hound attacks Old Dan while the elder Pritchard boy attacks Billy. Billy tells him to stop so they can separate their hounds, but the Pritchards are not worried since their dog is bigger and stronger than Old Dan. However, they had not counted on Little Ann, who runs in to help Old Dan. Between the two of them, the blue tick hound is about to die. The elder Pritchard then grabs Billy's axe and runs toward them, intending to separate them. Billy gets there first and pulls the dogs apart. He calls to the Pritchards to take care of their dog, but neither of them move. It turns out that the elder one had tripped while running with the axe, which entered his stomach and effectively killed him.

Grandpa enters Billy into a championship raccoon hunt, which means Billy will be competing with grown men and the finest hounds in all the country. Entrants come from Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, and other places. Little Ann wins the beauty pageant at this hunt, earning a little silver cup. When they go hunting the first time, the pair of hounds tree three coons, qualifying them for the final round. During the final round, the pair tree one coon before a blizzard comes up. Billy, his father, Grandpa, and the judge lose track of the dogs. Finally, after half the night, they find them circling a tree in a gully. Billy's father chops down the tree and three coons come running out. The dogs dispatch two of them, but the third gets away. They need one more coon to win the championship, but since the blizzard is still going on Billy does not want his dogs to chase the coon for fear of them freezing. However, against his wishes, the dogs chase the coon. Billy and the rest of the company wait out the blizzard in the gully. In the morning, the hunters discover the two dogs covered with ice unceasingly running around a tree. All the hunters help Billy melt the ice off his dogs. Then they watch as the trio take care of the last coon. Billy, Old Dan, and Little Ann win the hunt and receive the championship gold cup as well as a jackpot.

With the money that Billy's hounds have earned, his parents have saved up enough for Billy's family to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma. This has been his mother's dream for a long time, since she wants the children to have a proper education. He takes his hounds out one evening and encounters a mountain lion (devil cat of the Ozarks), which the hounds fight to protect Billy. Billy helps them by swinging his axe at the cat. Old Dan receives a gash across the stomach among numerous other wounds. His entrails come out and he has to be sewn up by Billy's mother. Despite all their attention, Old Dan dies from the severe injuries and loss of blood at their home. With her companion gone, Little Ann loses her will to live and she dies lying by his grave. Billy's mother reveals to him that she and Billy's father had planned to let Billy remain with his dogs at Grandpa's place, since they knew how much he loved his dogs. However, she says that the Lord hates to see a family separated, and that this is a sign from Him to help the family stay together. The family are about to move out the following spring, and Billy visits their grave one last time. A sacred red fern grows over both their graves. Billy recalls a local legend about how two Native American children had gotten lost in a storm and frozen to death lying next to each other. They were found in the spring time with a beautiful red fern growing over their bodies. It was said that only an angel could plant the seed of a red fern. The whole family is in awe of this rare and unique plant, and they carry the memory of the red fern with them to town. Billy never returns to the Ozarks but in his memories, he will always be with his dogs.