Three Short Novels 1955–1965

About the Book

In the spring of 2018 at the age of eighty-one, the author attacked a stack of manuscripts that had sat on various shelves for over fifty years. Three short novels, some stories, and many fragments made a dusty pile many inches high. Privateer, the earliest novel, had been written while at Harvard and published in the literary magazine MSS in 1974. In this work, an armed merchant ship in the aftermath of World War II sails into New York harbor to wreak havoc on the lives of a brother and sister—Primo and Marie—who live in a brothel by a live-chicken market. Zoyhaique, started at Harvard and finished in the navy, a novel of revolution in a South American country, follows the life of Hensoldt, a German with a checkered past and his coconspirators. Theo and Kia, started in the navy and finished at Hopkins, chronicles the loves of Theo, an agent working it appears for the Israelis hunting down apparent Nazis for a bounty, and Kia, whose relation to the Third Reich is ambiguous.

About the Author

William Palmer, emeritus professor at The Ohio State University, was born in 1937 and educated in New York City schools, at Harvard, and at The Johns Hopkins University where he earned a doctorate in physics. At Harvard while a physics major he took writing courses from John Hawkes and Albert Guerard. His early works of fiction were published in the Harvard Advocate, Audience, genesis west, and MSS. After Harvard he continued scribbling while in the U.S. Navy for three years where he served as CIC officer and navigator. Literary output persisted as a sideline while in graduate school at Hopkins but was put aside soon after when family and professional career made inroads on his time. In 2004, four years after his retirement, he published a memoir, Blood and Village (Xlibris), about his parents and early life.