About the author
Mary (1890–1970) and Conrad Buff (1886–1975) produced fourteen books between them. Three of them, Big Tree (1947), The Apple and the Arrow (1952), and Magic Maize (1954), were runners up for the Newbery Medal.
Mary Marsh was born in Ohio, and was educated at Bethany College in Kansas. She studied painting in Chicago and Cincinatti. She married Conrad Buff in 1922, and taught before working as a writer. Her husband, Conrad, was born in Switzerland, attended art college there, and went to the United States in 1904. He developed an individual style, which won him prizes, and acclaim, some of his paintings being in the permanent collection of the British Museum, the National Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum.
One of their joint works was the horse story Peter’s Pinto.
Links and sources
Terri Wear: Horse Stories – An Annotated Bibliography
Mary & Conrad Buff’s papers are in the de Grummond collection
Bibliography (horse books only)
Peter’s Pinto, a Story of Utah
Viking Press, New York, 1949, 95 pp
Ward Richie Press, Los Angeles, 1965, 95 pp
Peter visits his uncle’s ranch in Utah. What he dreams of most is finding a pinto colt to have for his own.
