Robert Leslie Conly, who went by the pen name Robert C. O’Brien, was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1918. He attended Williams College for two years before he dropped out. Conly later returned to school and graduated from the University of Rochester with an English degree in 1940. The third child of five, he came from a well-educated, literate family. After graduation, he worked first for Newsweek magazine, and later, after his marriage in 1943, as a reporter and editor for the Washington Times-Herald. From 1951 until his death in 1973, he worked as a writer and editor for National Geographic. This position took him all over the world.
In 1953, he bought a small farm near Washington, DC,...
