Martin Archer Flavin, best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning Journey in the Dark (1943), had two other careers before becoming a novelist, spending twenty years in business and another twenty as a playwright. Born in San Francisco, Flavin grew up in Chicago and attended the University of Chicago in 1903-1905. He then tried writing short stories while working nights for the Chicago Tribune before becoming an office boy for a Joliet, Illinois wallpaper company in 1906. According to Flavin, "Writing as a business did not seem to me to promise a financial independence which would enable me to write to suit myself. An opportunity presenting [itself] to enter a manufacturing business, I did so, and for twelve years did not write a line. It was not until 1918 that I was able to begin to divorce myself from business life."

Because of a lifelong love for the theater, Flavin returned to...