That Winter

Merle Miller

Nov 2016 · Pickle Partners Publishing

About this eBook

First published in 1948, Merle Miller’s first novel, That Winter, is a book of disillusioned youth, of veterans in the post-war world, in a story of personal despair, individual tragedy. It is the winter after the war has ended. Peter lets his inaction lead to writing for a magazine in which he has no faith. Lew renounces his Jewish name and family. Ted realizes that his only home was the Army. Through Westing, a phony novelist, who serves as catalytic agent, Ted suicides, Peter throws up his job, Lew realizes he cannot pass as a Christian.

Widely considered to be one of the best novels about the post-war readjustment of World War II veterans, this classic novel will have you captivated from the first page.

“Here is the clarification of unresolved drives, problems, incidents, of the push and pull of Fitzgerald, in the recording of the cracking of foundations, security, personal affairs, of hard reality edged with the passion of beliefs, with the gentleness of characterization.”—Kirkus Review

About the author

Merle Miller (May 17, 1919 - June 10, 1986) was an American writer, novelist, and best-selling author. He is perhaps best remembered for his best-selling biography Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry. S. Truman, and as a pioneer in the gay rights movement following his now famous article in the New York Times Magazine on January 17, 1971, titled “What It Means to Be a Homosexual”, which was also published later that year as a book.

Born in Montour and raised in Marshalltown, Iowa, he attended the University of Iowa and the London School of Economics. Before World War II, he was a Washington correspondent for the late Philadelphia Record. During the war, Miller served both in the Pacific and in Europe as a war correspondent and editor for Yank, The Army Weekly. Following his discharge from the Army, he went on to become editor, reviewer and contributor for a many other newspapers and magazines, including Harper’s Bazaar and Time.

During the course of a writing career that spanned several decades, Miller wrote numerous novels, including the best-selling classic post-war novel, That Winter (1948); Island 49 (1945); The Sure Thing (1949); Reunion (1954); A Day in Late September (1956); A Secret Understanding (1961); A Gay and Melancholy Sound (1962); and What Happened (1972).

Following the success of his Truman biography, he wrote further biographies on President Lyndon Johnson and General Eisenhower. He also wrote many television plays and was the author of the screenplays, “The Rains of Ranchiphur” (1955), which starred Richard Burton and Lana Turner, and “Kings Go Forth,” (1958), featuring Frank Sinatra and Natalie Wood.

Miller died in 1986 aged 67.