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Tiger on the Road: The Life of Vardis Fisher

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Tiger On The Road: The Story Of Vardis Fisher is the biography of 1930s American author Vardis Fisher -- an erudite, accomplished, and today largely unknown contributor to great American literature. Once known as the "dean of Western novelists", Fisher is a superb novelist whose works have unfortunately been neglected too much and for too long. Illustrated with numerous black-and-white photographs, Tiger On The Road is an excellent look into fascinating life and literature. The author of thirty six published works, it can confidently be expected that this outstanding biography of a Rocky Mountain regional author will inspire a resurgence of interest in his timeless, extraordinary, iconoclastic work. His life was as vivid and as dramatic as the plots of his novels. Tiger On The Road is a superbly presented literary biography.

Vardis Fisher exemplified the spirit of individualism, the rugged West, a largely self-taught education and, most importantly, an almost peculiarly Americanism that has almost vanished. This is a good biography that gives as much (if not more) attention to the literary words as it does the strictly biographical aspects.

Fisher is famous for his Western novels, in particular his rather sympathetic book on the Mormons. He remained an atheist to the end and was convinced after a lifetime of study and reflection that modern society is a consequences of our evolutionary psychology and that forces we consider paramount - love, sex, death, religion, family - have their roots in our pre-human past.
Thus the rise of certain taboos, myths and belief systems.

His epic series, THE TESTAMENT OF MAN, followed our evolutionary climb from cave man to modern creature. And since it challenged some basic tenets of Judeo-Christian beliefs it was attacked and in essence, censored from the public forum. This is not only a good book but an important one.