Douglas Clyde Jones was an American author of historical fiction, including alternative history fiction. As a boy, he had lived for a time in Fort Smith, Arkansas

Fort Smith, Arkansas

Fort Smith is the second-largest city in Arkansas and one of the two county seats of Sebastian County. With a population of 86,209 in 2010, it is the principal city of the Fort Smith, Arkansas-Oklahoma Metropolitan Statistical Area, a region of 298,592 residents which encompasses the Arkansas...

, adjacent to former Indian territory.

Douglas Jones was born in Winslow, Arkansas

Winslow, Arkansas

Winslow is a city in Washington County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 399 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers Metropolitan Area.-History:...

. Following the divorce of his parents, he graduated from the Fayetteville, Arkansas

Fayetteville, Arkansas

Fayetteville is the county seat of Washington County, and the third largest city in Arkansas. The city is centrally located within the county and is home to the University of Arkansas. Fayetteville is also deep in the Boston Mountains, a subset of The Ozarks...

 high school in 1942 and was drafted into the army, where he served in the Pacific Theater. Following his discharge, Jones attended the University of Arkansas

University of Arkansas

The University of Arkansas is a public, co-educational, land-grant, space-grant, research university. It is classified by the Carnegie Foundation as a research university with very high research activity. It is the flagship campus of the University of Arkansas System and is located in...

 and obtained a bachelor's degree in journalism in 1949. He subsequently returned to the army and served for another twenty years. In service, he obtained a masters degree from the University of Wisconsin. After resigning his commission as Lt. Colonel in 1968 after twenty-five years of service, Jones taught journalism at Wisconsin for six years.

Jones wrote his first novel, The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer, which was soon turned into a television drama, based on the premise that Custer had survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

In addition to his writings, Jones was also a painter in the western genre and a jazz musician.

Douglas Jones died in Fayetteville of obstructive pulmonary disease.

In an effort to keep his work alive, in November 2010, New American Library reissued Jones's Civil War novel Elkhorn Tavern in trade paperback. It is the first of four planned reissues of his novels.

Books by Douglas Jones

• The Treaty of Medicine Lodge [non fiction] (1966)
• The Court-Martial of George Armstrong Custer (1976)
• Arrest Sitting Bull (1977)
• A Creek Called Wounded Knee (1978)
• Winding Stair (1979)
• Elkhorn Tavern (1980)
• Weedy Rough [stories] (1981)
• The Barefoot Brigade (1982)
• Season of Yellow Leaf (1983)
• Gone the Dreams and Dancing (1984)
• Roman (1986)
• Remember Santiago (1988)
• The Search for Temperance Moon (1991)
• This Savage Race (1993)
• Shadow of the Moon (1995)
• A Spider for Loco Shoat (1997)
• Sometimes There Were Heroes (2005)