John D. Fitzgerald

John Dennis Fitzgerald (February 3, 1906 - May 21, 1988) was an American author. Born in Price, Utah, the son of an Irish Catholic father and a Scandinavian Mormon mother, Fitzgerald left Utah in 1925, at the age of 18, and held a variety of jobs, including playing in a jazz band, working at a bank and working for a steel company. He published his first novel, Papa Married a Mormon, in 1955. Its sequel, Mamma’s Boarding House, followed in 1958, as well as a selection of other novels for adults about late nineteenth and early twentieth century Utah. Fitzgerald also published many stories published in magazines and co-wrote two textbooks on creative writing. In the 1960s, he turned his attention to books for children, writing the highly successful The Great Brain series, in which his characters are loosely based on characters from his own family and community, including himself. He passed away in 1988 at the age of 82.