Rawlins, Jennie Brown

About the author

Jennie Brown Rawlins (1910–2003) was an Idaho-based author who started writing once her children, Barbara and Lane, were teenagers and she had more time to herself. She was named Idaho’s Writer of the Year for three years, and wrote for adults as well as for children. Her best known book, High Button Shoes, was a fictionalised account of her childhood on a farm, and was the first in a trilogy of books, with Secret in the Cave being the second, and her one horse book, Tame the Wild Wind, the third. Tame the Wild Wind is a coming of age story. It was reprinted for the State of Idaho’s centennial celebration in 1990. The ending had always saddened the author, so the reprint was given a different, and happier, ending.

Jennie Brown Rawlins’ son, Lane, served as President of three universities: Memphis, Washington State and North Texas, and created a scholarship in creative writing at the University of Washington State in her name after her death.

Finding the book
Easy to find, but was not printed in the UK.

Links and sources
Terri A. Wear: Horse Stories, an Annotated Bibliography, Scarecrow Press, 1987
Biographical information from Don Matson, Jennie Brown Rawlins’ grandson
Biographical information, and information on the Jennie Brown Rawlins Scholarship in Creative Writing
Many thanks to Lisa Catz for the picture and information on the book.