Within a few days after receiving the notice that his two book-length manuscripts had been accepted, James Oliver Curwood handed in his resignation to the Detroit News-Tribune as assistant editor, and began to plan and devote his life wholly to literary work. Thus, the News-Tribune lost one of its finest writers. Jim was a natural born newspaperman and with his resignation the paper suffered a great loss.
Upon his leaving the Detroit paper, Jim wrote to his brother Ed, who still was in Ohio and invited him on a long vacation trip into the wilderness. Ed accepted and the two brothers enjoyed one of the grandest adventures of their lives in the country surrounding Hudson’s Bay.
CHAPTER EIGHT
GOD’S COUNTRY
With the acceptance of his first two novels in 1907 Jim Curwood definitely proved that he knew what he was doing and that he was on the right road to success. Even then, as the young author received official word of the forthcoming publication of his first two works, he was drafting plans for the writing of three other pieces of fiction work. These were only the forerunners of many others which followed and which established James Oliver Curwood as one of the foremost authorities on the Canadian Northwest.
Jim’s first book, “The Wolf Hunters,” was somewhat of a juvenile story centering about the Hudson Bay wilds. Although starting it had been rather hard for him, Jim soon developed it into an easy task, and so, fired with still greater ambition, he wrote a second novel, “The Courage of Captain Plum.”
Writing book-length novels was new to Jim, but it was work which was both interesting and good. He was always out of bed by five in the morning and by six o’clock he could be found fast at work. Jim would write steadily until noon and many times long past noon. There were many occasions when his wife would have to call him several times before he would leave his desk, so engrossed was he in his writing.
For over a year he pounded his typewriter. He never rewrote any of his work, believing that once a story was written it could never be rewritten quite so good. Of course, he did take time to correct his grammar and punctuation, but that was as far as he went.
It was during this period of incessant writing that Jim’s home life began to suffer a severe blow, for he had been neglecting his family. Jim began to notice a great change in his wife.
Yet, while he felt that something was wrong in his household, it never dawned upon him that not only was he driving himself to the limit, but he also was driving his wife’s patience to the very end. For it was very little that she saw of him, and even when she was with him, it seemed as if his mind was always on the waiting typewriter and paper, and not upon her or their children. In two years the great blow fell. Early in 1908 the inevitable result came ... divorce.