A writer finds wealth fame and sorrow in midcentury Manhattan in a tremendous novelfull of wisdom and pain by a 1 New York Timesbestselling author Los Angeles Times Arthur Youngblood Hawke an exNavy man moves from hardscrabble rural Kentucky to New York hoping to make his mark on the literary world His first novel becomes an instant hit and he is toasted by critics and swept along on a tide of celebrity But as he gives himself over to the lush life that gilds artistic successindulging in an affair with an older married woman and a flirtation with his editor dabbling in real estate developments as his second novel brings him massive wealth and even bigger opportunitieshe will soon find himself in a selfdestructive downward spiral Inspired by the life of Thomas Wolfe and spanning from the Manhattan publishing world to Hollywood to Europe Youngblood Hawke is both a riveting saga of postwar glamor and a poignant tale of one mans rise and fall A big powerful exciting novelWouk has a tremendous narrative giftSan Francisco Chronicle As searing and accurate a picture of New York in the late 1940s and 1950s as Bonfire of the Vanities was of its periodAnd icing the cake are some marvelous Hollywood sections including the best agentinactionontwotelephones scenes ever captured in printLos Angeles Times