James Norman Hall (April 22, 1887 - July 5, 1951) was a U.S. author most famous for the novel Mutiny on the Bounty. He was born in Colfax, Iowa, where he attended the local school. Hall graduated from Grinnell College in 1910 and became a social worker in Boston, Massachusetts. Hall originally enlisted in the British army during World War I, but switched to the Lafayette Escadrille, a French-American flying corp, before the United States officially entered the war. There he met another American pilot, Charles Nordhoff. After being shot down, Hall spent the last months of the conflict as a German prisoner of war.
The war finished, Hall spent much of his life on the island of Tahiti, where he and Nordhoff, who had also moved there, wrote a number of successful adventure books including the "Bounty Trilogy". Many of their books were subsequently made into movies. In 1925 Hall married Sarah (Lala) Winchester, who was part-Polynesian. They had two children: the cinematographer Conrad Hall and Nancy.
Hall died in Tahiti and is buried on the hillside property just above the modest wooden house he and Lala lived in for many years.
