J Hyatt Downing

Biography

John Hyatt Downing was born on March 18, 1888 in Granville, Iowa. He grew up in Hawarden, Iowa and Blunt, South Dakota. He worked on his father's ranch and as a railroad surveyor for the Northwestern Railroad, hotel's night clerk and sherpherd in Wyoming, Nebraska and the Black Hills. He then graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1913.

He worked for the Internal Revenue Service in Aberdeen, South Dakota. He married Mary McGinnis and they had one son, John, in 1921. They moved to Carlsbad, New Mexico and managed an alfalfa farm shortly after he had contracted tuberculosis, but returned to the Midwest by 1925.

From 1925 to 1930 he published short stories in Scribner's Magazine, while working as an insurance agent in Saint Paul, Minnesota. His first novel, A Prayer for Tomorrow, was a semi-autobiographical account of the ranching culture in South Dakota. He moved to Sioux City, Iowa and wrote four more novels, including Sioux City, which he sold to the movies. For this reason, he moved to Los Angeles, though the movie was never made and he wrote publicity and radio scripts for Twentieth Century Fox instead. His last short story was published in Reader's Digest in 1963. His novel Four on the Trail was a paperback Western only released in England.

He died in 1973.