American author of 13 novels published between 1944 and 1988, best known for his Western novels, which drew on early experiences in the American West.
By the time he was twenty-nine, Savage had worked as a wrangler, ranch hand, welder, and railroad brakeman. Following the publication of his first novel, The Pass, and the birth of his first two children, Robert and Russell, Savage secured a teaching position at Suffolk University in Boston, Massachusetts, where he taught from 1947–1948. His daughter Elizabeth was born in 1949, the same year he left Suffolk for an assistant professorship at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. By 1955, Savage was able to stop teaching and focus on his writing full-time.
In 1955, Savage and his wife, the novelist Elizabeth Savage, purchased a home in Georgetown, Maine, where they would remain for nearly thirty years. She wrote many novels, including The Last Night at the Ritz. In 1982, the Savages built a home on Whidbey Island in Puget Sound, on property given to him by a sister he met only in adulthood. He published the last of his 13 novels in 1988. Set in Montana, The Corner of Rife and Pacific follows the founders of a tiny Montana town over several generations.
After the death of his wife in 1989, Savage lived briefly in Seattle and San Francisco, before moving to Virginia Beach, Virginia, in order to be near his daughter. His son, the writer Robert Brassil Savage, died in 2001 in a “freak accident”.
Thomas died in Virginia on 25 July 2003, at the age of eighty-eight.
Link to Wikipedia biography