Elmer Kelton

Elmer Kelton spent close to fifteen years as farm and ranch editor of the San Angelo Standard-Times, then edited Sheep and Goat Raiser and joined Livestock Weekly, staying in agricultural journalism until he retired in 1990. That reporting is the bedrock of the fiction. He grew up at Horse Camp in Andrews County, Texas, born there in 1926, was drafted into the infantry in 1944 and served in Europe, and took a journalism degree at Texas in 1948. The Time It Never Rained, published in 1973, follows Charlie Flagg, a stubborn West Texas rancher who refuses federal drought relief through the long dry spell that held the state until 1957 and loses nearly everything except his own terms. Kelton collected seven Spur Awards from the Western Writers of America, several Western Heritage Awards and the Owen Wister Award for lifetime achievement, and in 1995 the Western Writers of America named him the greatest western writer of all time. His memoir Sandhills Boy appeared in 2007. He died in San Angelo in 2009, aged 83.