Carter and some of his supporters demonstrated against him, carrying signs reading "Wallace is a bigot" and "Free our white children". The demonstration was the last notable public appearance by "Asa Carter". Literary career and death After losing the election, Carter relocated to Abilene, Texas, where he started over. He began work on his first novel, spending days researching in Sweetwater's public library. He distanced himself from his past, began to call his sons "nephews", and renamed himself Forrest Carter, after Nathan Bedford Forrest, a general of the Confederate army who fought in the Civil War, and the first leader of the Ku Klux Klan. Carter moved to St. George's Island, Florida in the 1970s where he completed a sequel to his first novel, as well as two books on American Indian themes. Carter separated from his wife, who remained in Florida. In the late 1970s, he again settled in Abilene, Texas. Carter's best-known fictional works are The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales (1972, republished in 1975 as Gone to Texas) and The Education of Little Tree (1976), the latter book being originally published as a memoir. Though Little Tree sold modestly during Carter's life, after his death, a reprint of the book became a sleeper hit. Clint Eastwood directed and starred in a film adaptation of Josey Wales, retitled The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976), after Carter sent the book to his offices as an unsolicited submission, and Eastwood's partner read and put his support behind it. At this time, neither man knew of Carter's past as a Klansman and rabid segregationist. In 1997, after the success of the paperback edition of The Education of Little Tree, a film adaptation was produced. Originally intended as a made-for-TV movie, it was given a theatrical release. Carter's sequel to The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales, entitled The Vengeance Trail of Josey Wales (1976) was planned by Clint Eastwood as a film project, but the project was eventually cancelled. The author's Watch for Me on the Mountain (1978), is a fictionalized biography of Geronimo. It was reprinted in 1980 in an edition titled, Cry Geronimo! Carter was working on The Wanderings of Little Tree, a sequel to The Education of Little Tree, as well as a screenplay version of the book, when he died in Abilene on June 7, 1979. The cause of death, reported as heart failure, was alleged to have resulted from a