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The Author's great-grandfather, William Shirley ("Old Bill") Williams, famed eccentric Methodist missionary, renounced his God for the Osages' Wah'Kon-Tah, married into the tribe. Author John Joseph Mathews, born near the Osage Agency (at Pawhuska, Okla.), was one of Major Miles's favored youngsters. After graduation from the University of Oklahoma he went to Oxford; after three and one-half years at Merton College he emerged with a natural science degree. Major Miles's notes on the Osages were coveted by many writers, including Edna Ferber (whose Cimarron covers the place and time), but Major Miles kept them for young John Mathews, willed them to him at his death. Urged on by the University of Oklahoma, aided by his own and his tribesmen's memories, Author Mathews settled down in the Osage hills to write. A first book, his work reads like the matured wisdom of a man civilized but unspoiled. Wah'Kon-Tah finished, Osage Author Mathews lives alone, far from the highroad, spends his time shooting, reading, hunting coyotes. Wah'Kon-Tah is the November choice of the Book-of-the-Month Club.