by Bartee Haile

On Aug. 28, 1959 a book reviewer had nothing but the highest praise for a newspaperman’s first novel:  “It may be a long time before a better one comes along.”

Allen Stuart Drury was born in Houston during the First World War and grew up in a small California town.  After earning a degree in journalism from Stanford, the cub reporter’s first job was on a weekly paper, where in 1940 he won a national award for editorial writing.

Following military service in...