SOURCE: A review of Through the Wheat, in Best Sellers, Vol. 38, No. 5, August, 1978, p. 140.

In the following review, Wilson laments Boyd's early death, asserting that Through the Wheat is a well-wrought novel.

There is a certain kind of novel that is simply a straightforward chronicle of events. It is a kind usually written in a manner equally straightforward and precise. Such is Thomas Boyd's Through the Wheat, a novel of World War I first published in 1923—when it was glowingly reviewed by F. Scott Fitzgerald—and now reissued by University of Southern Illinois Press as part of its Lost American Fiction series.

Like his protagonist, Private Hicks, Boyd left high school to join the Marines, doubtless inspired by all the hogwash current at the time about waging a war to end war and making the world safe for democracy. His novel, however, is more the story of Hicks's...