James Lee Burke, December 5, 1936

So many birthdays on Dec 5 (I saved this one for the next day.)

Happy birthday to

"... novelist James Lee Burke, born in Houston, Texas (1936). He's best known for his series of detective novels featuring Dave Robicheaux, an ex-New Orleans policeman, Vietnam veteran, and recovering alcoholic. Burke's novels have been compared to those by master crime novelists like Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett.

Burke started writing stories when he was in fourth grade, published his first story when he was 19, and wrote his first novel when he was 23. Half of Paradise (1965) was published just after he finished graduate school, and it got great reviews. Burke wrote a few more novels, but none of them sold well. He fell into depression and alcoholism. He had finished a book called The Lost Get-Back Boogie, but he couldn't find anyone to publish it. He collected 93 rejection slips for the book over a period of 10 years. He worked as a newspaper reporter, a land surveyor, a social worker, a forest ranger, a teacher, and a truck driver. He later said, "I reached a point ... where I didn't care whether I lived or died." Finally, in 1985, The Lost Get-Back Boogie was published by Louisiana State University Press. The novel is about a released prisoner who goes to live on a Montana ranch with the family of one of his friends from prison. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Burke's novels have been successful ever since.

Thanks Writer's Almanac 2006