About the Author
Don Coldsmith has written 40 books, 150 articles and 1600 newspaper columns. The bulk of his fiction is a series of historical novels, "The Spanish Bit Saga" (Bantam/Doubleday) which focuses on the Indians of the Great Plains from the time of first contact with Europeans. There are more than six million copies in print, as well as editions in German, French and Swedish...
    Born in Iola, Kansas, son of a Methodist minister, Coldsmith graduated from high school in nearby Coffeyville and entered the U.S. Army in 1944. He served as a combat medic in the Pacific theater during World War II. Among the first troops to enter Japan at war's end, he was assigned primary medical care of the upper echelon war criminals, including Premier Tojo.
    Returning to the States after the war, he graduated from Baker University in 1949. He worked as a YMCA youth director, bringing about the first interracial swimming in Topeka, Kansas, in the same school district that would later be involved in the famous "Brown vs. Board of Education" case. He earned his doctorate in medicine in 1958. He served as a family practitioner in Emporia, Kansas until 1988, when he closed his office to devote his time to writing.
    Coldsmith is a Past President of Western Writers of America. He has been a finalist for the Western Writers' Golden Spur award six times, winning the award for best original paperback in 1990 for his book The Changing Wind. The Native Sons and Daughters of Kansas chose him Distinguished Kansan of 1993 in 1993. In 1995, he won The Edgar Wolfe Award for lifetime contributions in literature. His 1997 book Tallgrass was chosen as a Book Of The Month Club selection, while his next title Medicine Hat (Oklahoma University Press) was a Doubleday Book Club choice that same year.
    He is popular speaker and lecturer, especially on topics dealing with the Great Plains and the American West. He is a member of the Speakers' Bureau for the Kansas Humanities Council. With his wife Edna, he maintains a ranching operation and has raised cattle, Appaloosa horses and five daughters, though not necessarily in that order.

Photo courtesy Homestead Magazine, John Deere, inc.

Visit www.doncoldsmith.net

Read Public Television Coldsmith feature transcript