Margaret Craven was born in Bellingham, Washington, in 1898, and attended Stanford University. She began her writing career as a newspaper journalist, and in fact it was a story she wrote for the Saturday Evening Post, based on the experiences of a minister in the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia, that was the genesis of her novel I Heard the Owl Call My Name. For much of her life Craven had struggled with a career as a fiction writer, experiencing only nominal success, but at the age of sixty-nine her quietly moving book about life in a Kwakiutl Indian village would become the culmination of her career.
Kwakiutl Indians. The Kwakiutl people live in and around the Queen Charlotte Strait, which is on the central coast of British Columbia, Canada; they formerly inhabited the northeastern part of Vancouver Island as well. The word Kwahiutl means "beach on the other side of the river," and at first designated a very specific place and group, though the term has been extended to apply to all tribes who share a common linguistic heritage.
This is a free page. This page contains 201 words. This
article contains 4,041 words (approx. 13 pages at 300
words per page).
Read the rest of this Article with our I Heard the Owl Call My Name Access Pass.
