Background
Fitzgerald was born in Price, Utah, the son of an Irish Catholic father and a Scandinavian Mormon mother.
(Ten-year-old Susan relates the adventures and frustration...)
Ten-year-old Susan relates the adventures and frustrations of her family's wagon train west, culminating when her twelve-year-old brother is asked to turn himself over to the Indians in order to save the lives of the rest of the party.
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Fitzgerald was born in Price, Utah, the son of an Irish Catholic father and a Scandinavian Mormon mother.
He left Utah in 1925, at the age of 18, and held a variety of jobs, including playing in a jazz band, working at a bank and working for a steel company. Other novels for adults about late nineteenth and early twentieth century Utah followed. Fitzgerald had many stories published in magazines, and he also co-wrote two textbooks about creative writing.
In the 1960s, he turned his attention to books for children, writing the highly successful, in which his characters are loosely based on characters from his own family and community, including himself.
Fitzgerald changed many family details in the Great Brain series. The novels are structured like a collection of short stories, in which Tom either swindles people and then rationalizes it by claiming it was to teach them a lesson, or solves an important problem for the community.
There are eight books in the series. The Great Brain More Adventures of the Great Brain Maine and My Little Brain The Great Brain at the Academy The Great Brain Reforms The Return of the Great Brain The Great Brain Does lieutenant Again The Great Brain Is Back (Published from loose notes after the author"s death) Adult fiction.
(Ten-year-old Susan relates the adventures and frustration...)