Frederick Manfred

Frederick Feikema Manfred (January 6, 1912 – September 7, 1994) was a noted Western author.

Manfred was born in Doon, Iowa. He was baptized Frederick Feikes Feikema, VII, and he used the name Feike Feikema when he published his first books. According to Alvin Plantinga, Manfred thought that he would have a hard time being taken seriously by the Eastern establishment with a name like "Feike Feikema", so he elected to change his name to Frederick Manfred. He was the individual who coined the popular term, Siouxland, for the immediate area around his home area of Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

From 1940 – 1942, he was a patient at Glen Lake Sanatorium in Minnesota. He met his future wife, Maryanna Shorba, at the sanatorium. He fictionalized this period in his book, Boy Almighty, published under the name Feike Feikema.

For a time he lived in a house which is now the interpretive center of Blue Mounds State Park in Rock County, Minnesota. He attended Calvin College in Michigan.

Manfred died in Luverne, Minnesota, in 1994, at the age of 82.

Fiction

• The Golden Bowl (Manfred) (1944)
• Boy Almighty (1945)
• This is the Year (1947), Doubleday & Company
• The Chokecherry Tree (1948)
• The Primitive (1949), Doubleday & Company
• The Brother (1950)
• The Giant (1951)
• Lord Grizzly (1954), ISBN 0-8398-2591-9, about the ordeal of mountain man Hugh Glass
• Morning Red (1956)
• Riders of Judgment (1957), ISBN 0-8398-2593-5 fictionalization of Wyoming's Johnson County War
• Conquering Horse (1959), ISBN 0-8398-2590-0
• Scarlet Plume (1964), ISBN 0-8398-2594-3
• King of Spades (1965), ISBN 0-8398-2592-7
• The Man Who Looked Like the Prince of Wales (1965)
• Eden Prairie (1968)
• The Manly Hearted Woman (1972)
• Milk of Wolves (1976)
• Green Earth (1977)
• Sons of Adam (1980)
• Flowers of Desire (1989)
• No Fun On Sunday (1990)
• Of Lizards and Angels (1992)

Note: There are also a handful of non-fiction titles, notably The Wind Blows Free, a memoir of the Dust Bowl, Conversations with Frederick Manfred, and Prime Fathers and Duke's Mixture, anthologies of FM's essays.

References

• "Frederick Manfred." Dictionary of Literary Biography 212:185-197. 1999.
• The Frederick Manfred Information Page

Robert C. Wright, Frederick Manfred (Twayne's United States Authors series ; TUSAS 336)