Peace Is a Shy Thing

“Alex Vernon has written a revelatory, insightful, and deeply moving biography of one of the most important authors of our time. Vernon beautifully illuminates the exquisite artistry and imaginative power of Tim O’Brien’s work, the discipline of his craft, and the urgent moral questions he reckons with. In these pages, O’Brien–a fascinating, complicated human being and artist–comes vividly to life.” –Lynn Novick and Ken Burns, filmmakers of The Vietnam War

“Tim O’Brien is one of the essential writers of his generation. More than any other records we have, his fiction documents the fissures that defined America in the latter half of the twentieth century and into the new millennium. They are also models of the highest art. In this magnificent new biography, Alex Vernon tells O’Brien’s story with sympathy and an understanding of the nuances–historical, cultural, political, and personal–that made O’Brien the writer he became.” –Tracy Daugherty, author of Pulitzer finalist Larry McMurtry“Vernon, whose critical faculties are very sharp throughout, is astute in tracing O’Brien’s early inspiration to the ‘moral injury’ he suffered during his service in the Vietnam War, and meticulous in stitching minute details in the life to parallel details in the work. Peace Is a Shy Thing is a marvelous tapestry, in which one may finally read the answer to one of Vernon’s key questions: How do you write inscrutability?” –Madison Smartt Bell, author of Child of Light

Alex Vernon, from Prairie Village, Kansas, graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point (the only literature major in his class of over a thousand), served in combat as a tank platoon leader in the Persian Gulf War, and earned a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. The recipient of an Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Book Award and a National Endowment of the Humanities Fellowship, he is the M.E. & Ima Graves Peace Distinguished Professor of English at Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas.