Along with Ernest Hemingway, William Saroyan, winner of a Pulitzer Prize in drama for The Time of Your Life and an Academy Award for the screenplay of The Human Comedy, was the most well-known American writer of the 1930s and 1940s. Lawrence Lee and Barry Gifford heard Saroyan's story first-hand from Carol Matthau, the wife he rejected; the son and daughter he alternately smothered and pushed away; and colleagues like Artie Shaw, Celeste Holm, and Lillian Gish. Their revelations bring new depth to Saroyan's riveting story.