Mardi Oakley Medawar is the daughter of an Eastern Band Cherokee father and Louisiana French mother. Her first novel, The Glory Days of Buffalo Egbert, published under the title, People of The Whistling Waters, was written for her father while he was undergoing treatments for cancer. Her father enjoyed reading but didn’t care much for historical fiction because he didn’t like the way Indian people were portrayed. Mardi decided to write a book for him, handing him a new chapter after each treatment. He lived long enough to finish the final chapter and then challenged Mardi to have the book published. It took four years to keep that promise. At the awards banquet, when the novel won Best First Novel of the Year from Western Writers of America, Mardi accepted the award in the name of her father, Walter Allen Oakley.
She went on to write seven more novels she was certain her father would have loved reading. As both a musician and an artist, Mardi Oakley Medawar lives and works in the Carolinas.
