“Quail Hunting at Little Hobcaw as Inspiration for Robert Ruark’s ‘The Old Man and the Boy,'” by Richard Rankin

Essay by Richard Rankin  Among Robert Ruark’s (1915-1965) complete body of work as a prolific, high-profile newspaper and magazine journalist and bestselling novelist, perhaps his most enduring literary accomplishments are his two sporting classics, The Old Man and the Boy (1957) and The Old Man’s Boy Grows Older (1961). Created from a series of highly […]

Richard Rankin

Richard Rankin has been the Anderson Davis Warlick Head of School at Gaston Day School for the last 17 years. He is the author of several books, including While There Were Still Wild Birds: A Personal History of Southern Quail Hunting, which is forthcoming in May 2018 with Mercer University Press.  He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  He and his wife, Sarah […]