Conrad Richter

“This is a well-researched and well-written psychological profile of an insecure, superstitious, but nonetheless rather appealing man. Johnson knows how to tell a story, describing in detail Richter’s unlikely path toward becoming an important writer.”

—Fred Hobson, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

“Johnson has produced a thorough, well-informed, and readable account of Richter, who clearly ranks among the important American novelists of his time. Johnson knows Richter’s territory, and writes about it with real authority.”

—Scott Donaldson

“Biographer Johnson portrays Richter through letters and diaries as a serious, self-castigating artist, one as worried about his income as his storytelling. . . . Richter’s self-doubt and his prickly relationship with his publisher, Alfred Knopf, continued throughout his career, even when his autobiographical novel, The Waters of Kronos, won the National Book Award in 1961. In the brief acceptance speech that the pathologically shy author had Knopf read for him, Richter described ‘hardship into gain’ as the theme of his pioneer novels, but it could apply equally to his life, well and thoroughly depicted here by Johnson.”

—Publishers Weekly