Thomas Savage was an American author of 13 novels published between 1944 and 1988.
Background
Savage was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1915 to Elizabeth (Yearian) and Benjamin Savage. His parents divorced when he was two years old and, when his mother remarried three years later, he moved with her to a ranch in Beaverhead County, Montana.
Education
After graduating from Beaverhead County High School, he studied writing at Montana State College (today the University of Montana), transferring to Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where he courted Montana native Elizabeth Fitzgerald (later to become the novelist Elizabeth Savage), whom he had met in Missoula.
Career
He is best known for his Western novels, which drew on early experiences in the American West. By the time he was twenty-nine, Savage had worked as a wrangler, ranch hand, welder, and railroad brakeman. Following the publication of his first novel (The Pass) and the birth of his first two children, Robert and Russell, Savage secured a teaching position at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts, where he taught from 1947–1948.
By 1955, Savage was able to stop teaching and focus on his writing full-time.
She wrote many novels, including The Last Night at the Ritz. In 1982, the Savages built a home on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, on property given to him by a sister he met only in adulthood.
He published the last of his 13 novels in 1988. Secretariat in Montana, "The Corner of Rife and Pacific" follows the founders of a tiny Montana town over several generations.
Thomas died in Virginia, July 25, 2003, at the age of eighty-eight.
Savage published his first story, "The Bronc Stomper", in 1937 in Coronet under the name Tom Brenner. Annie Proulx has noted that the story was "unremarkable except for its unusual subject matter", breaking a horse. When asked to speak of his influences, Savage stated "Mistress
Bridge by Evan South. Connell, is one of the best novels I ever read.
I was influenced by John Steinbeck, Robert Benchley, and Dorothy Parker. I was a history major, read little fiction, chiefly biography and history.
I read Society of Jesus (Jesuit) Perelman.".