FULLER [MCCOY], IOLA (1906– ). Born in Marcellus, Michigan, Iola
Fuller worked both as a librarian and a teacher at Ferris State College before
engaging in writing full-time. She won an Avery Hopwood award at the
University of Michigan in 1939 for her first novel, The Loon Feather (1940),
which deals with the relationships among the Ojibways of Mackinac Island
and the trappers, traders, and militia who encroach upon their territory. In
The Gilded Torch (1957), Fuller traces Rene ´ Robert Cavelier, de la Salle on
his route along the present-day Saint Lawrence Seaway, through the Great
Lakes* and down the Mississippi to claim the Louisiana Territory. The novel
focuses on the hardships of the trip and suggests the effects of the explorers,
missionaries, and settlers on the Great Lakes and other parts of the Northwest Territories and on the Native Americans there.