Anton Myrer

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Anton Myrer
Born	November 3, 1922(1922-11-03) Worcester, Massachusetts, United States of America
Died	January 19, 1996 Saugerties, New York, United States
Occupation	Novelist
Nationality	American
Genres	Fiction

Anton Olmstead Myrer (November 3, 1922–January 19, 1996) was an American author, best known for the historical military novel Once an Eagle.

Born in Worcester,^[1] he grew up in Boston, graduating from Boston Latin High School in 1940. He prepared at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire before entering Harvard College in September 1941 with the Class of '45. His studies were interrupted, however, following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Shortly after the attack, he, like many of his college peers, sought to enroll in the Army Reserve but was rejected. In 1942, he enlisted and was accepted by the United States Marine Corps. He participated in the liberation of Guam and invasion and occupation of the remaining Mariannas. He was wounded at Guam and rose to the rank of Corporal before being discharged in 1946.

He returned to Harvard and graduated magna cum laude with an A.B. two years after his original classmates in May 1947.

In August of 1947, he married artist Judith Rothschild and moved to California. Random House published his first novel Evil Under the Sun in 1951. To support his family, he continued to work a number of low-paying, blue-collar jobs. In 1957, The Big War, published by Appleton-Century-Crofts, was financially and critically successful leading to the 1958 film screenplay he wrote with Edward Anhalt re-titled In Love and War, starring Robert Wagner and Bradford Dillman.

In 1960, the Myrers moved back to the Northeast to a country home in Saugerties, NY, and a summer home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Little, Brown published The Violent Shore (1962) and The Intruder (1965).

Myrer’s most successful novel, Once an Eagle, was published in 1968 by Holt, Rinehart and Winston, at the height of the Vietnam War.

He left his wife and divorced her 1970 and soon he married Patricia Schartle.

He wrote three more novels: The Tiger Waits (1973 published by Norton); The Last Convertible (1978 published by Putnam); and A Green Desire in (1981 also published by Putnam).

Mr. Myrer died on January 19, 1996, of leukemia.^[2], at the age of 73 survived by his widow.

1 Novels
2 Biography
3 Bibliography
4 References
5 External links

[edit] Novels

Evil Under the Sun

The Big War
The Violent Shore
The Intruder
Once an Eagle - The story of two Army officers, one a ruthless, career-obsessed schemer, the other his exact opposite, and their personal and professional lives from the end of World War I to the beginning of Vietnam.
The Tiger Waits
The Last Convertible - The story of five Harvard men and their coming-of-age in the dark days of World War II through the early 1960s New Frontier/Camelot/John F. Kennedy era. The elegant "last convertible" of the title is seen by them as the symbol of their romantic youth.
A Green Desire