page_title: Vardis Fisher
section_title: Testament of Man
hierarchical_section_title: Vardis Fisher / Testament of Man
caption_attribution_description: In 2012, the BLM purchased 431 acres known as Fisher Bottom along the South Fork of the Snake River as part of the Land and Water Conservation program. The property is significant due to its location and culturally important part of Idaho history since it is the original homestead and historical ranch complex of the Fisher family and well-known author of the frontier Americana genre, Vardis Fisher.
context_page_description: Vardis Alvero Fisher was an American writer from Idaho who wrote popular historical novels of the Old West. After studying at the University of Utah and the University of Chicago, Fisher taught English at the University of Utah and then at the Washington Square College of New York University until 1931. He worked with the Federal Writer's Project to write the Works Project Administration The Idaho Guide, which was published in 1937. In 1939, Fisher wrote Children of God, a historical novel focused on the early Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The novel won the Harper Prize. In 1940, Fisher moved to Hagerman, Idaho, and spent the next twenty years writing the 12-volume Testament of Man series of novels, depicting the history of humans from cavemen to civilization. Fisher's novel Mountain Man was adapted in the film Jeremiah Johnson.
  Fisher is often grouped with disaffected Mormon writers in Mormon fiction. Leonard Arrington and his graduate student John Haupt wrote that Fisher was sympathetic towards Mormonism, an idea that Fisher's widow, Opal Laurel Holmes, strongly repudiated.
context_section_description: In 1940, Fisher moved to Hagerman, Idaho with his third wife. There he started his Testament of Man series, an epic series spanning twelve volumes and tracing the development of the human race from prehistoric times, culminating in another autobiographical work, Orphans of Gethsemane. He read over 2,000 scholarly books in his research on the history and development of the human race for the Testament of Man series. Writing the 12 unsuccessful books took 20 years, and readers disliked the long, rambling digressions. Vanguard Press published volumes one through five; Abelard published the sixth and seven, and Alan Swallow published volumes eight through twelve. J. H. Gipson, a publisher at Caxton Printers, published In Tragic Life, which was somewhat successful. Caxton printers had published The Idaho Guide, and Gipson and Fisher were friends until Gipson refused to print Jesus Came Again: A Parable, the eighth novel of the twelve-volume epic. Alan Swallow offered to publish the remaining volumes, focusing on special signed and numbered editions to help offset printing costs. All twelve novels in the series have been out of print for decades.
  Anthropologist Marilyn Grunkemeyer stated that all the protagonists in The Testament of Man are Fisher himself. She noted that Fisher did not listen to advice from his editors and publishers in publishing the Testament of Man, resulting in poorly edited books. She described reading Orphans of Gethsemane (1960) as "one of the most difficult reading experiences of my life," stating that the book was "spiritually exhausting and emotionally toxic."  She wrote that the entire twelve volumes were "a massive exposition of one of the greatest perduring male fantasies of all time." Austin wrote that the novels are "pretty good," and provided "a good sampling of the state of anthropological scholarship during his lifetime."
  Fisher was named a lifetime member of the Western Literature Association.
caption: Part of the Fisher land near the south fork of the Snake River
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