The Friends of the Library in KCK
present the

Presented  to Don Coldsmith
March 5, 1995

	Don Coldsmith was born in Iola, Kansas in 1926. He served as a Work War II combat medic in South Pacific and returned to his native state, where he graduated from Baker University in 1949 and received his M.D. from the University of Kansas in 1958. He worked at several jobs before entering medical school: he was YMCA Youth Director, a gunsmith, a taxidermist, and for a short time a Congregational preacher. In addition to his private medical practice, Dr. Coldsmith has been a staff physician at the Health Center of Emporia State University, where he still teaches in the English Department. He discontinued medical pursuits in 1990 to devote more time to his writing. He and his wife of thirty-four years, Edna, operate a small cattle ranch. They have raised five daughters. Coldsmith's works include the Spanish Bit Saga, a series of 27 novels; Runestone (novel),  1995; Tallgrass: A Novel of the Great Plains, 1997; South Wind (sequel to Tallgrass), 1998, and The Long Journey Home, 2001. His awards include a Golden Spur Award for best original paperback for The Changing Wind from the  Western Writers of America in 1990,  and he was inducted into the Writers Hall of Fame of America in 2000.
Life was good. He shifted his position in the warm autumn sunshine, enjoying the view of the hills and the lake. Autumn color was painting the hillsides with splashes of bright orange, yellow, and red, in stark contrast to the dark green of spruce, cedar, and pine. Three crows beat their way lazily across a distant clearing to land in a dead tree at the other side. What does a crow think? he wondered, and was immediately startled at such a thought. I am thinking like the People, he told himself, unsure whether this was good or a cause for alarm. Or whether it mattered. -Don Coldsmith from Runestone, 1995 Reprinted by permission of the author

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