Billy Coleman vs. Wilson Rawls
Since Billy Coleman is the star in Wilson Rawls’s book, Where the Red Fern Grows, we decided to compare them. One of their many similarities is that they both happen to be born in the Oklahoma Ozark Mountains. Wilson Rawls and Billy Coleman also both grew up with hound dogs as pets. Both Wilson and Billy moved to the city as teenagers to get a better education. They also had many differences such as Wilson lived in Idaho Falls from 1958 to 1975 while Billy only lived in the Ozark Mountains before his big move to the city. Wilson also wrote a book that was published first as a three-part series in the Saturday Evening Post in 1961, and then as a book later that year. Billy never wrote a book, to anyone’s knowledge. Billy also had the tragic experience of watching Rubin Pritchard die a painful death, where as, to our knowledge, Wilson Rawls never had to go through something.