Harrison said he became a novelist after he fell off a cliff while bird hunting. During his convalescence, his friend Thomas McGuane suggested he write a novel, and "Wolf: A False Memoir" (1971) was the result. It is the story of a man who tells his life story while searching for signs of a wolf in the northern Michigan wilderness. This was followed by "A Good Day to Die" (1973), an ecotage novel and statement about the decline of American ecological systems, and "Farmer" (1976), a "Lolita"-like account of a country school teacher and farmer coming to grips with middle age, his mother’s dying, and complications of human sexuality.