Dearen was born and raised in Sterling City, Texas, between San Angelo and Big Spring. His father, Delbert Dearen, and his mother, the former Thyra Violet Sparkman, are interred at Montvale Cemetery in Sterling City. Dearen graduated in 1969 from Sterling City High School, where one of his teachers had encouraged him in January 1966, while in his freshman year, to consider a career in writing. In 1974, he earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. His mother, Thyra, died that same year at the age of 56. At her encouragement, young Dearen read Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan of the Apes that also played a role in his interest in becoming a writer. He won nine national and state awards as a reporter for two daily newspapers, including the San Angelo Standard-Times and the Midland Reporter-Telegram, of which his wife, Mary Gilda Dearen, is the managing editor.
Career
Dearen is an authority on the Pecos and Devils Rivers, which nearly meet at Lake Amistad, and on the tenets of old-time cowboy life in West Texas. During the late 1980s and early 1990s, he conducted oral histories of 76 men who had been cowboys prior to 1932. These interviews, along with decades of archival study, enriched his 11 novels and 9 nonfiction books. One of those novels, Perseverance, is a story of hobos riding the railroad tracks of Texas during the Great Depression. He is also known for his interest in folklore, and writes to please professional historians and general readers. Dearen was named the runner-up in 2013 for the Will Rogers Medallion from the Academy of Western Artists for his novel To Hell or the Pecos. He has also been honored for his work by the Western Writers of America, the San Antonio Conservation Society, and the Permian Historical Association. Dearen enjoys backpacking and playing ragtime on the piano. His wife and he have one son, Wesley Joseph Dearen, the first reader of his father's books. In 2015, another Dearen novel, The Big Drift, won the Elmer Kelton Fiction Book of the Year by the Academy of Western Artists.
Portraits of the Pecos Frontier When Cowboys Die A Cowboy of the Pecos Crossing Rio Pecos , includes the story of Horsehead Crossing in Crane County The Last of the Old-Time Cowboys
2000 to 2004
Castle Gap and the Pecos Frontier
Halff of Texas: Merchant Rancher of the Old West Comanche Peace Pipe On the Pecos Trail The Hidden Treasure of the Chisos When the Sky Rained Dust , a novel of the depression Dust Bowl
2006 to present
Saddling Up Anyway: The Dangerous Lives of Old-Time Cowboys Lone Star Lost: Buried Treasures in Texas Devils River: Treacherous Twin to the Pecos, 1535-1900 Starflight to Destiny, Part I Starflight to Eternity, Part II In 2019, Dearen released Apache Lament, an historical novel based on the last Indian battle in Texas. The characters offer opposing perspectives. As the plot proceeds into the relationship between a Texas Ranger and an Apache mother, their viewpoints become more similar.
