[1][2] Crabb graduated from Peabody College (today a part of Vanderbilt University), where he received a Bachelor of Arts degree.
[1] His first trilogy, published between 1942 and 1945, featured Nashville landmarks: Dinner at Belmont, Supper at the Maxwell House, and Breakfast at The Hermitage.
These three novels span from the eve of the American Civil War to 1897, the date of the Tennessee Centennial and International Exposition, and depict a period of upheaval for the city, state, and nation.
Home to the Hermitage, a novel about Andrew and Rachel Jackson toward the end of her life, was dramatized and presented on the Cavalcade of America radio program in 1948.
He wrote two books about his native state, Home to Kentucky: A Novel of Henry Clay in 1953, and Peace at Bowling Green (1955) a story of a community from the pioneer times of 1803 to the end of the Civil War.