Schaefer read voraciously as a child; early favorites were Edgar Rice Burroughs and Alexandre Dumas, before moving onto Charles Dickens and Zane Grey, among others.
[5] Schaefer's education included multiple courses on Greek and Roman mythology, which is thought to have served him well in creating the archetypal heroes that populated his Westerns.
[7] In his career as a journalist, Schaefer wrote innumerable news stories, feature articles, and opinion columns and thousands of book/film/play reviews and editorials.
It formed the basis of Schaefer's first novel, Shane, set in Wyoming, which was published four years later, and which was a great success.
The Albuquerque Journal writer Ollie Reed Jr. wrote, “That Schaefer could turn out such a Western before he ever saw the West is a tribute to his dogged research, devotion to facts, and storytelling ability, all honed by his newspaper work.”[12] Schaefer's other westerns included First Blood (1953), The Canyon (1953), Company of Cowards (1957), The Kean Land and Other Stories (1959), Monte Walsh (1963), Heroes Without Glory: Some Goodmen of the Old West (1965), and The Collected Stories of Jack Schaefer (1966).
"[16] He had hoped the movie version would be played by the actor George Raft, instead of Alan Ladd.
Other films included Tribute to a Bad Man with James Cagney, 1956, based on the short story Hanging’s for the Lucky; Trooper Hook, 1957, featuring Joel McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck and adapted from the story Sergeant Houck; and 1964's Advance to the Rear, taken from the 1957 novel Company of Cowards.
[23] In 1955, after taking a train trip West on an assignment from Holiday magazine to do some research on old western cow towns Schaefer sold his farm near Waterbury, Connecticut,[24] and moved to a 300-acre ranch[25] near Cerrillos, about 20 miles southwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico called the Turquoise Six.
[30] Fifty years after its publication, Shane had sold over 12 million copies and been translated into thirty foreign languages.