Forty Loads

Brett Cogburn is the great-grandson of the man who inspired True Grit, Rooster Cogburn. He was reared in Texas and the mountains of Southeastern Oklahoma, where his grandfather taught him to ride a bucking horse and his father taught him to hunt. For many years he made his living from the back of a horse. Somewhere during his knockabout years cowboying and working in oil fields, he earned a B.A. in English with a minor in history. He lives with his family on a little ranch in Oklahoma, where the West is still teaching him how to write.