Author. He worked first as a newspaper columnist and reporter for an army newspaper in Texas, and later for the Fresno Morning Republican. After a brief service in the U.S. Army during World War I, lingering health problems led him to leave the U.S. in 1920 and go to live in the warm environment of the south Pacific. He traveled to Tahiti and managed a plantation in Papeete, and there he began to write about his travels. His first book-length piece, titled The Book of Puka-Puka, was published in 1929. It is an account of life on Puka-Puka that criticizes commercialism and aggressiveness, and praises a more sedate and primitive style of life. In 1930 he started working on his second novel, My Tahiti, which was published in 1937. It consists of thirty short stories about the author and his living among Tahitians. In the 1940s, after the death of his wife, he and his children lived for a time on the atoll Suwarrow. The story of their survival there during a hurricane was serialized in 1943 by in the Atlantic Monthly, and later in the novel The Island of Desire. In 1943, diagnosed with tuberculosis, he was evacuated to a hospital. He never recovered full health, but he continued to travel and write for the rest of his life.
Author. He worked first as a newspaper columnist and reporter for an army newspaper in Texas, and later for the Fresno Morning Republican. After a brief service in the U.S. Army during World War I, lingering health problems led him to leave the U.S. in 1920 and go to live in the warm environment of the south Pacific. He traveled to Tahiti and managed a plantation in Papeete, and there he began to write about his travels. His first book-length piece, titled The Book of Puka-Puka, was published in 1929. It is an account of life on Puka-Puka that criticizes commercialism and aggressiveness, and praises a more sedate and primitive style of life. In 1930 he started working on his second novel, My Tahiti, which was published in 1937. It consists of thirty short stories about the author and his living among Tahitians. In the 1940s, after the death of his wife, he and his children lived for a time on the atoll Suwarrow. The story of their survival there during a hurricane was serialized in 1943 by in the Atlantic Monthly, and later in the novel The Island of Desire. In 1943, diagnosed with tuberculosis, he was evacuated to a hospital. He never recovered full health, but he continued to travel and write for the rest of his life.
Bio by: Pete Mohney
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