Frederick Manfred

Frederick Feikema Manfred (January 6, 1912 – September 7, 1994) was a noted Western author. Manfred's novels are very much connected to his native region. His stories involve the American Midlands, and the prairies of the West. He named the area where the borders of Minnesota, Iowa, South Dakota, and Nebraska meet, "Siouxland."

Manfred was born in Doon, Iowa. He was baptized Frederick Feikes Feikema, VII, and he used the name Feike Feikema when he published his first books. He was the oldest of six boys, all over six feet tall, and was himself six feet nine inches tall. Manfred was a third generation Frisian American, whose family originated in the village of Tzum, in the Dutch province of Friesland.

Manfred was raised in the Christian Reformed Church. James Bratt argues that Manfred rebelled against this upbringing, being filled with "religious doubts and ethical chafings." Bratt goes on to discuss this influence that this upbringing had on Manfred's writing, and suggests that the qualities of his work - "earthy detail, metaphysical sweep, both set to biblical cadence - are precisely those of his native faith."

In 1937 Manfred worked as a sports reporter for The Minneapolis Journal. He was fired a couple years later, due to his involvement in union organization. Shortly after this Manfred developed tuberculosis and entered Glen Lake Sanatorium in Oak Terrace, Minnesota, in April 1940. It was in this sanatorium that he met his future wife Maryanna Shorba. Manfred left the sanatorium in 1942 and worked on the staff of Modern Medicine and as assistant campaign manager for Hubert Humphrey, who was a candidate for mayor of Minneapolis. He fictionalized this period in his book Boy Almighty, published under the name Feike Feikema.

Manfred published The Primitive, the first novel in his World's Wanderer trilogy, in 1949. It was poorly received, and the next two books in the trilogy, The Brother (1950) and The Giant (1951), met with mixed reviews. In 1952 Manfred decided to change his name from Frederick Feikema to Frederick Feikema Manfred, and Frederick Manfred became his publishing name. Lord Grizzly, the first of "The Buckskin Man Tales," was the first work Manfred published under his new name. It was a best seller and one of the finalists for the National Book Award in 1954. The "Buckskin Man Tales" are the novels Lord Grizzly, Conquering Horse, Scarlet Plume, King of Spades, and Riders of Judgment.

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