Ronald Hugh Morrieson, who died in 1972, was a novelist and short-story writer who spent all his life in Hawera in south Taranaki. He earned his living as a musician and music teacher, playing in local dance bands. Morrieson wrote four novels: The Scarecrow (1963), Came a Hot Friday (1964), The Predicament (1975) and Pallet on the Floor (1976). Morrieson once commented that he might be 'another of those poor buggers who gets discovered when they're dead'. And so it turned out. He struggled to get published, and the majority of his writing was published posthumously.