Through the Wheat

Fresh out of high school in Defiance, Ohio, Thomas Boyd enlisted in the Marines during the patriotic fervor of 1917 and returned from World War I in 1919, having earned a Croix de Guerre. His literary ambitions flourished as he joined the St. Paul News and opened a bookstore frequented by notable writers like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sinclair Lewis. Boyd's debut novel, Through the Wheat, received immediate acclaim, with Fitzgerald praising it as "a work of art." He authored five additional works before his untimely death at age 37 in Vermont.