[2] When first published in 1976 by Delacorte Press, it was promoted as an authentic autobiography recounting Forrest Carter's youth experiences with his Cherokee grandparents in the Appalachian mountains.

However, the book was proven to be a literary hoax orchestrated by Asa Earl Carter, a KKK member from Alabama heavily involved in segregationist causes before he launched his career as a novelist.

The book was a modest success at its publication, attracting readers with its message of environmentalism and simple living and its mystical Native American theme.

It became a bigger popular success when the University of New Mexico Press reissued it in paperback, and it saw another resurgence in interest in 1991, entering the New York Times Best Seller list and receiving the first American Booksellers Association Book of the Year (ABBY) award.

It was revealed that he had been a Ku Klux Klan member and segregationist political figure in Alabama who wrote speeches for George Wallace.

The book has been the subject of a number of scholarly articles, many focusing on the hoax and on the impact of the author's white supremacist background on the work.

The fictional memoirs of Forrest "Little Tree" Carter begin in the late 1920s, when his parents die, and he is given to the care of his part-Cherokee grandfather and his Cherokee grandmother at the age of five.

The boy's Cherokee "Granpa" and "Granma" call him "Little Tree" and teach him about nature, farming, whiskey making, mountain life, society, love, and spirit by a combination of gentle guidance and encouragement of independent experience.

Encounters with outsiders, including "the law," "politicians," "guv'mint," "city slickers," and "Christians" of various types add to Little Tree's lessons, each phrased and repeated in catchy ways.

[citation needed] In the years following his active political engagement, Carter left Alabama, changed his name, and began his second career as an author, taking care to conceal his background.

[8][9] On June 13, 2014, This American Life aired the episode "180 Degrees", which argued whether or not there was a change in Carter's attitudes between the period from politician to writer.