Don George Berry (January 23, 1932 – February 20, 2001)[1] was an American author and artist best known for his trilogy of historical novels about early settlers in the Oregon Country.
Described as one of "Oregon's best fiction writers of the post-World War II generation",[2] and a "Forgotten Beat",[3] Berry's second novel, Moontrap (1962), was nominated for the National Book Award in 1963.
[5] Berry moved to Oregon with his mother when he was still in his teens, living in the Vanport housing project and attending Roosevelt High School, where he was elected student body president.
[5][6] After winning a scholarship in mathematics, Berry enrolled at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, which he attended from 1949 to 1951, taking classes with the noted calligrapher Lloyd Reynolds and historian Dorothy Johansen.
[8] Together with Snyder, Welch, and Whalen, who would later informally come to be known as the West Coast Beats, Berry formed the Adelaide Crapsey-Oswald Spengler Mutual Admiration Poetasters Society, devoted to "[drinking] wine, [writing] poetry, and goof[ing] off".
"[12] More recently however, the spiritual themes of the book have been subject to a critical reappraisal, with Therése Jörgne completing a phenomenological study of the novel in 2012.
[19] Although the site is no longer maintained, this large body of literature, which includes a memoir and an unfinished fantasy novel set in Minoan Crete has been preserved thanks to the Internet Archive.