Edward Abbey was born in 1927 in the Appalachian area of Pennsylvania. He was the oldest of five children born to a family of Scotch-German descent. His anti-capitalist father was a trapper and logger with Marxist leanings; his religious mother was a school teacher. As a child he wrote his own comic books but did not pass journalism in high school. Abbey graduated in 1945 from high school, where he was a top student. Thinking he would be drafted into the army, he decided to tour the country first. At age 17 he hitchhiked west. From 1943-1947 he served in the army. The day he completed basic training in Alabama, the Japanese surrendered. The rest of his hitch was spent in Naples, Italy as a motorcycle MP.
             When he returned to the States in 1947, Abbey entered the University of New Mexico; this is where he became interested in writing and served as editor for the student literary magazine, "The Thunderbird." He ultimately took his MA in Philosophy from there. He resided in the Southwest from 1947 until his death. Home to him was Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, and Nevada--the whole Southwest. Although he preferred country life, Abbey still wanted to live within 50 or 60 miles of a city.
             Writing was a passion for Abbey. It was not a career; it was his life. It was said that "he was neither left wing nor right wing, nor was he an outlaw. He wrote against the grain, always choosing the path of greatest resistance". Abbey did jail time for reckless driving and public drunkenness, as did many of his characters, and there is violence in most of his books. When asked about this he replied, "As for violence, I'm against it for I am a practical coward." He believed the modern world contains violence as a part of it but that few things are worth killing for.
             As with most Southwestern writers, Abbey saw the land as a chief character in any novel. He believed that "land acts upon and shapes human beings everywhere, eastern as well as western, c...