Where the Red Fern Grows
Wilson Rawls (1961)
“A boy, two dogs, and the Ozark wilderness — and the story of what loving something completely costs you.”
At a Glance
Ten-year-old Billy Colman desperately wants two coonhounds, saves two years of penny-by-penny earnings to buy them, and trains Old Dan and Little Ann in the Cherokee hunting grounds of the Oklahoma Ozarks. The dogs become legendary hunters. Billy wins the gold cup at a championship hunt. Then a mountain lion attacks, and Old Dan dies of his wounds. Little Ann, heartbroken, dies days later at Old Dan's grave. A red fern — a plant that Cherokee legend says only an angel can plant — grows up between their graves, a sign of their sacred bond.
Read full summary →Why This Book Matters
One of the bestselling middle-grade novels of the twentieth century — reliably in the top 100 most-assigned books in American middle schools. The novel's treatment of grief — direct, unsentimental, and fully honorable — distinguished it from most children's literature of its era and gave generations of young readers their first serious encounter with loss in fiction.
Diction Profile
Informal and direct — Ozark rural vernacular, simple declarative sentences, almost no literary decoration
Very low. Rawls uses almost no metaphor or simile. When figurative language appears, it stands out precisely because it is rare. The red fern itself operates as a symbol, but Rawls never announces it as one