James Dudley Houston (November 10, 1933 – April 16, 2009) was an American novelist, poet and editor. He wrote nine novels and a number of non-fiction works (some co-authored and/or edited).
Houston co-authored his wife's autobiographical memoir, Farewell to Manzanar, about her family's experiences in the Manzanarinternment camp during World War II. The book became a bestseller after it was published in 1973.
Houston's historical novel Snow Mountain Passage (2001) was inspired by a personal link to the ill-fated Donner Party of early Californian history. A second historical novel, Bird of Another Heaven (2007), explores California's beginnings, based on the history of Nani Keala, daughter of a Native American mother and Native Hawaiian father. She was one of a small group who went up the Sacramento River with John Sutter in 1839 and helped build the eponymous fort.[2]
Works
Between Battles (1968)
Gig (1969)
A Native Son of the Golden West, Ballantine Books (1972)
California Heartland: Writing from the Great Central Valley, with Gerald W. Haslam (1978)
West Coast Fiction: Modern Writing from California, Oregon, and Washington, editor (1979)
Gasoline: The automotive adventures of Charlie Bates (1980)
Californians: Searching for the Golden State (1982)
One Can Think About Life After the Fish Is in the Canoe: And Other Coastal Sketches/Beyond Manzanar: Views of Asian-American Womanhood, with Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston (1985)
Love Life (1985)
The Men in My Life: And Other More or Less True Recollections of Kinship (1987)
Surfing : the sport of Hawaiian kings (1996)
In the Ring of Fire: A Pacific Basin Journey (1997)
Farewell to Manzanar with Connections, with Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston (1998)
The Last Paradise (Literature of the American West) (1998)
Snow Mountain Passage (2001)
The Literature of California, Volume 1: Native American Beginnings to 1945, editor (2001)
