Quicknation    Louis LAmour

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Louis L'Amour (March 22, 1908 – June 10, 1988) was an American author of (primarily) Western fiction (see also Frontier, Western movie, and Wild West).

He was born of French-Canadian background March 22, 1908 in Jamestown, North Dakota. The last of seven children to a veterinarian father and a teacher mother, Louis was an avid reader as a child. In the early 1920's, his parents decided to pack up the family and find better economic conditions. When he was 15, he got separated from his family in the American southwest and began to work a string of diverse jobs, which gave him ideas for his fiction. He continued to be an itinerant worker, traveling the world, up to the start of WWII. In the 1930's he began to sell stories to pulp magazines. After serving in WWII, he continued to write stories for magazines. In the 1950's, he began to sell novels. He eventually wrote more than 100 novels, selling more than 225 million copies that were translated into dozens of languages and made into 30 motion pictures. He wrote The Ferguson Rifle (see Ferguson rifle).

Many criticise the Western genre, but he considered himself and at least once related that after he died, he only wanted to be remembered as a good storyteller. Given the fantastic success of his writings, the fate seems secure.

In 1982 he won the Congressional (National) Gold Medal, and in 1984 the Medal of Freedom. Louis L'Amour is a recipient of the state of North Dakota's Roughrider Award.

Louis L'Amour died on June 10, 1988 and was buried in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California. His autobiography detailing his years as an itinerant worker in the west,