He published four novels — Lightwood (1939), River Rogue (1942), This Is Adam (1958), and Devil's Elbow (1969) — that depict the marring of Agrarian ideals by the social transformation of south Georgia between 1870 and 1960.

It was during this period that he started writing poems and other fiction pieces, In 1928, Cheney married Frances Neel, a reference librarian and a future professor at Peabody College.

[3] The couple moved into Idler's Retreat in Smyrna, Tennessee, an historic homestead owned by Frances' family.

After leaving the newspaper in 1940, Cheney moved to Washington, D.C., when he worked as executive secretary for Senator Tom Stewart.

The novel is about a young man in backwoods Georgia who works his way up in the timber industry to become a rich, though corrupt, merchant.

[2] In February 1952, Cheney's play, Strangers in This World, premiered at the Vanderbilt University Theater in Nashville.

In August 1952, Cheney wrote an appreciative review of Flannery O'Connor's first novel, Wise Blood.

[5] In his reply, Cheney described himself to the Catholic O'Connor as "an ex-Protestant, ex-agnostic, who had just found his way back (after 10 or 12 generations) to The Church".

In November 1960, Cheney's play I Choose to Die premiered at the Vanderbilt University Theater.

During the festival, Cheney, who had served as a raft-hand around 1917,[8] piloted a reconstructed timber raft from Lumber city to the coast at Darien, Georgia.

Cheney's novels reveal his desire for a return to a simpler way of life, one founded on natural cycles and rooted in an appreciation of the land.