Editing Conrad Richter (section)

==Writing career==
During the early 1930s, Richter had numerous stories published in [[pulp magazines]] such as ''Triple-X'', ''Short Stories'', ''Complete Stories'', ''Ghost Stories'', and ''Blue Book''.<ref>[http://amsaw.org/amsaw-ithappenedinhistory-101304-richter.html ''Conrad Richter'' (American Society of Authors and Writers)]</ref><ref>[https://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=25509 ''Conrad Richter author spotlight''(Random House, Inc.)]</ref> His ''Early Americana and Other Stories'' (1936) was considered his first successful book.<ref name="psupress"/>

He persisted with his work, gradually writing and publishing full-length novels. Richter set his novels in different periods of American history on its changing frontier. He may be best known for ''[[The Sea of Grass]]'' (1936), set in late nineteenth-century [[New Mexico]], and featuring conflict between ranchers and farmers. It was later adapted as a movie [[The Sea of Grass (film)|of the same name]], directed by [[Elia Kazan]] and featuring [[Katharine Hepburn]] and [[Spencer Tracy]], released in 1947.

Richter's novel ''[[The Light in the Forest]]'' (1953), set in late eighteenth-century Pennsylvania and Ohio, featured challenges faced by a young white man who had become an assimilated [[Lenape people|Lenape]] Amerindian after being taken captive as a child. After the boy was returned as a youth to white culture, he was considered suspicious. This novel also became very popular and had a second life as a [[The Light in the Forest (film)|movie]], released in 1958. Richter returned to the topic of the white child raised in an alien culture in his later novel ''A Country of Strangers'' (1966). As noted by Ernest Cady in his review in the ''[[Columbus Dispatch]]'', both books were written from the point of view of Indians. He wrote of Richter,

<blockquote>He simply tells how he thinks things were for both Indians and whites, in a hard time of violence and danger and change on a raw frontier. And does it so convincingly that the reader senses that this indeed, is how it must have been.<ref name="ohioana"/></blockquote>

During this period, Richter also published the novels of his trilogy [[The Awakening Land trilogy|The Awakening Land]], about the Ohio frontier: ''[[The Trees (Richter novel)|The Trees]]'' (1940), ''[[The Fields (novel)|The Fields]]'' (1946), and ''[[The Town (1950 novel)|The Town]]'' (1950). In 1947 he won the Ohioana Book Award for ''The Fields.''<ref name="ohioana"/> ''The Town'' was awarded the [[Pulitzer Prize]] in 1951.<ref name=pulitzer>[http://www.pulitzer.org/bycat/Fiction "Fiction"], ''Past winners & finalists by category''. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-03-28.</ref> In a review of the last novel, [[Louis Bromfield]], also an Ohio writer and winner of the Pulitzer Prize, wrote of the trilogy:

<blockquote>the three books are not only concerned with Sayward and her family but the growth and the astonishingly rapid development of a whole area which has played a key role in the nation's history… Mr. Richter has reproduced the quality and the speech of these people so well that a thousand years from now, one may read his books and know exactly what these people were like and what it was like to have lived in an era when within three or four generations a frontier wilderness turned into one of the great industrial areas of the earth…. 'The Town' stands on its own as an entity and may be read on its own as a full, rich and comprehensive novel based upon the lives of ordinary people, brave and ever heroic in their own small way...<ref name="ohioana"/>
</blockquote>

The trilogy was first published in one volume in 1966 by [[Alfred A. Knopf]]. It was adapted as a TV miniseries [[The Awakening Land|of the same name]] in 1978, in which several plot changes were made as a result of the changing social culture of the time, especially concerning race and sexuality. 
 
Richter's short story, "Doctor Hanray's Second Chance", first published in the magazine ''[[The Saturday Evening Post]]'' in 1950 (June 10),<ref name=isfdb/> has a theme of reconciling with the past. Richter returned to this theme in his 1960 autobiographical novel, ''The Waters of Kronos'' (Chronos). ([[Chronos]] was the ancient Greek personification of Time.) This novel won the U.S. [[National Book Award]] in 1961.<ref name=nba1961>[https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1961 "National Book Awards – 1961"]. [[National Book Foundation]]. Retrieved 2012-03-28. (With essay by Harold Augenbraum from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog.)</ref>

The short story "Doctor Hanray" was republished in the anthology, ''The Saturday Evening Post Fantasy Stories'' (1951) and in several later [[speculative fiction]] anthologies published by the ''Post'' and others.<ref name=isfdb/> The [[Internet Speculative Fiction Database]] catalogs five of Richter's stories, including a very early one, "The Head of His House", from a 1917 anthology, ''The Grim Thirteen'' ([[Dodd, Mead]]).<ref name=isfdb>{{isfdb name|20255}} (ISFDB). Retrieved 2013-11-19.</ref>

After Richter's death, two short story collections were published posthumously. Additionally, several of his novels have been reissued by academic presses. When ''The Waters of Kronos'' was reissued in paperback format in 2003, one reviewer wrote,

{{quote|To celebrate the reappearance of such a worthy novel may be an expression of regional patriotism, but it should also be an opportunity to think about our own small towns, our own haunted memories, and our own quest for the meaning of the past.|Jeffrey S. Wood, ''Cumberland County History''<ref name="psupress"/>}}