Sample of authors
Oates, Joyce Carol
American author, born into a Protestant working-class family in the little town of Lockport in the western part of the state of New York. The family had a difficult economic situation and she spent most of her childhood and adolescence with her paternal grandparents on a farm in Erie. As a child, she liked to read and write; she got her first book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, from her g...
Literary figures
Leonard Pine
Gender: Male
Afro-American, physically fit, homosexual Vietnam veteran with an explosive temper. Leonard Pine grew up in the home of an uncle who disapproved of him because of his sexual orientation. He is good friends with his total opposite, the calm, pacifistic Hap Collins with roots in the American working class, and they work together for a detective agency in a long suite of stories filled with...