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William Byron Mowery (1899-1957) was known as "The Zane Grey of the Canadian Northwest," and was a mentor, naturalist and novelist born in the village of Adelphia, a farming community of Ross County, in the forested Appalachian region of Ohio. At the age of 11 he left his family's migratory, "chicken-wagon" home and started out to see the world; for 18 months he tramped about the country, visiting 30-odd states. After a winter's trapping in the Athabasca country, he roamed the United States for another two years and then entered high school at 18.

He earned degrees from both Ohio State University and the University of Illinois and taught English at the University of Texas. His writing career started when he read a "north woods" story in which description and details were so inaccurate that Mowery determined he could do better himself. Editors seemed to agree and in three years he produced more than 400 published stories.

His "north woods" stories can be found in magazines like Argosy, Adventure, Ace-High, and Blue Book. His first appearance in Adventure Magazine was "The Seventh Man" in the October 30, 1923 issue. From 1929 to 1948, William Byron Mowery published fifteen novels and short story collections that, as a total work, may be the most literate and realistic of the Mountie genre. Several of his novels and stories were adapted into films like The Mysterious Pilot and Heart of the North.