Arthur Youngblood Hawke, an ex-Navy 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 success-indulging 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 opportunities-he will soon find himself in a self-destructive 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 man's rise and fall.