Publisher says 'Legends of the Fall' author Jim Harrison has died

Jim Harrison, the fiction writer, poet, outdoorsman and reveler who wrote with gruff affection for the country's landscape and rural life and enjoyed mainstream success in middle age with his historical saga "Legends of the Fall," has died at age 78.

Spokeswoman Deb Seager of Grove Atlantic, Harrison's publisher, told The Associated Press that Harrison died Saturday at his home in Patagonia, Arizona. Seager did not know the cause of death.

Harrison completed more than 30 books and was compared with Ernest Hemingway in the range and kinds of his interests. He was a hunter and fisherman who savored his cabin near his Michigan hometown, a drinker and Hollywood scriptwriter who was close friends with Jack Nicholson and came to know Sean Connery and Warren Beatty among others.

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