In this, the first book-length study of Salter, William Dowie distills the essence of Salter's literary achievement and discusses the vicissitudes of literary glory. With copious biographical material based upon personal interviews and a twelve-year correspondence, Dowie tracks Salter from his Manhattan youth and West Point days through careers as an Air Force pilot, screenwriter, and journalist, to his blossoming as a writer of novels and short stories.

What emerges is a portrait of the writer as a risk taker, willing to discard whole careers in his quest for literary immortality.