Alan Fry's significance in B.C.'s literary history lies in his accurate and sometimes humourous portrayals of life on B.C. Indian reserves and the corresponding inflexibility of white officials, including police. Some of his titles have been reprinted but Fry's literary reputation has faded due to the constraints of `political correctness`.

Alan Fry was born and raised on a family ranch near Lac La Hache, B.C. in 1931. Although some of his ancestors were farming Quakers in Wiltshire, his grandfather Roger Fry, a member of the Fry family that prospered in the chocolate business, was a Cambridge graduate who kept company with the Bloomsbury Group. Fry is the author of The Ranch on the Cariboo, first published in 1962, about a teenager's introduction to manhood and ranching in the early 1940s.