The Shepherd of the Hills

This is the book that made the Ozarks famous. Published in 1907, Harold Bell Wright's masterpiece follows a wounded stranger known only as the Shepherd who arrives in the remote hills of Mutton Hollow, seeking escape from a life shattered by sorrow. Among the rugged mountaineers, the kindly giant Grant Matthews and his restless son Young Matt, the beautiful Sammy Lane with her dreams of the city, and the proud folk bound by old ways and old grudges, he finds something he didn't expect: a chance to live again. Wright refuses to sentimentalize his Eden. The hills hold both grace and violence, love and loss, the kind and the corrupt. It's a story about what happens when a man broken by the modern world enters a place where life is simple but never easy, where faith is tested by suffering, and where redemption comes not from escaping the world but from learning to inhabit it fully. The novel sold millions and continues to draw pilgrims to Branson, Missouri, where outdoor performances still bring these characters to life over a century later.