Thomas Savage (novelist)


Thomas Savage was an American author of 13 novels published between 1944 and 1988. He is best known for his Western novels, which drew on early experiences in the American West.

Background

Savage was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1915 to Elizabeth 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. After graduating from Beaverhead County High School, he studied writing at Montana State College, transferring to Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where he courted Montana native Elizabeth Fitzgerald. They married in 1939 and received B.A. degrees in 1940.
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 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. His daughter Elizabeth was born in 1949, the same year he left Suffolk for an assistant professorship at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. By 1955, Savage was able to stop teaching and focus on his writing full-time.
In 1955, Savage and his wife, the novelist Elizabeth Savage, purchased a home in Georgetown, Maine, where they would remain for nearly thirty years. 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. Set in Montana, "The Corner of Rife and Pacific" follows the founders of a tiny Montana town over several generations.
After the death of his wife in 1989, Savage lived briefly in Seattle and San Francisco, before moving to Virginia Beach, Virginia, in order to be near his daughter. His son, the writer Robert Brassil Savage, died in 2001 in a "freak accident".
Thomas died in Virginia, July 25, 2003, at the age of eighty-eight.

Writing career

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.
His last novel, The Corner of Rife and Pacific, was nominated for the PEN/Faulkner Award and received the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association Award in 1989.
When asked to speak of his influences, Savage stated "Mrs. Bridge, by Evan S. 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 S.J. Perelman."

Awards