Vardis Fisher book collection

Vardis Alvero Fisher was born March 31, 1895, in Annis, Idaho to Temperance Thornton and Joseph Oliver Fisher. He married Leona McMurtrey in Antelope, Idaho on September 10, 1917; they remained married until Leona’s death in 1925. In 1920 he graduated from the University of Utah with a B.A. and went on to obtain his M.A. from the same institution. He obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1925 and began his career as a novelist shortly after in 1928 with the publication of his first book Toilers of the Hills.

He continued writing and publishing books as well as briefly teaching English in Utah, New York, and Montana before returning to Idaho. He married is second wife Margaret Trusler October 2, 1928, in Manhattan, New York. From 1935 to 1939 Vardis acted as head of the Idaho Writers Project, producing works on Idaho history, folklore, and geography. In 1939 he won the Harper Prize for Fiction for his fictional history of Mormons titled Children of God. After his divorce from Margaret, he married Opal Laurel Holmes in Gooding, Idaho on April 16, 1940. They built a home in Hagerman, Idaho where he lived until is death in 1968.