Daniel Woodrell, the novelist known for writing “country noir” novels like “Winter’s Bone” and “Give Us a Kiss,” died Friday of pancreatic cancer. He was 72.
His cause of death was confirmed by his wife, Katie Estill-Woodrell. He died at his home in West Plains, Missouri.
The author was born on March 4, 1953, in Springfield, Missouri. The son of a registered nurse and a wholesale metal dealer, he dropped out of high school at the age of 17 to join the U.S. Marines. During his service, he was stationed in Guam but was eventually given a general discharge, following an investigation into drug use.
Years later, Woodrell earned a bachelor’s degree in English at the University of Kansas and later a master’s degree at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. It was there that he met his future wife Katie, a fellow student. The two married in 1984 and, after a period of upheaval and travel around the country, eventually settled again in Woodrell’s home state of Missouri, where he lived the rest of his life.
His first novel, “Under the Bright Lights,” was published in 1986. The novel, about a police detective named Rene Shade who begins investigating a murder in the very heart of Louisiana’s bayou country, became the first installment in Woodrell’s Bayou Trilogy, which later included 1988’s “Muscle for the Wing” and 1992’s “The Ones You Do.”
Woodrell coined the term “country noir” to describe his work when he published his 1996 novel “Give Us a Kiss,” which saw him return to his home region of the Ozarks to tell a story of a crime novelist who leaves California to search for his missing brother. Woodrell went on to set most of his novels in the Missouri Ozarks region.
He is, perhaps, best known for writing 2006’s “Winter’s Bone,” the novel that inspired the Oscar-nominated 2010 drama of the same name four years later.
That Debra Granik-directed film saw then-up-and-comer Jennifer Lawrence play an impoverished teenage girl who goes on a dangerous search for her missing father in the rural Ozarks in order to save herself and the rest of her family from homelessness. Lawrence earned her first Oscar nomination for Best Actress for her performance.
“Winter’s Bone” was not the only one of Woodrell’s novels to be adapted by Hollywood. His 1987 novel “Woe to Live On” became director Ang Lee’s 1999 film “Ride with the Devil,” while his 1998 novel “Tomato Red” was adapted by writer-director Juanita Wilson into a 2017 film of the same name starring Jake Weary and Julia Garner.
Woodrell is survived by his wife Katie and his brother Ted.
