Dearly Beloved

Sylvester, Harry: - Harry Sylvester (1908-1993) wrote fiction that pierced the heart of the American Catholic experience. During his life, he published over 126 short stories and five novels: Big Football Man (1933), Dearly Beloved (1942), Dayspring (1945), Moon Gaffney (1947), and A Golden Girl (1950). He was born in Brooklyn, graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1930, and spent the next twenty-five years traveling throughout North America before settling in the Washington, DC area from 1955 till his death. Though he was considered one of the most promising American Catholic authors of the 20th century, he gave up writing fiction in 1951, after which he spent the next twenty years writing and researching for the U.S. State Department. He was one of the first Americans to promote Graham Greene's work and, like Greene, interviewed Saturnino Cedillo during the midst of the Mexican Civil War. He was friends with Ernest Hemingway and J. F. Powers, serving as a member of the wedding party for the latter. His writing combined a journalist's attention to detail with a novelist's concern for character and plot, creating memorable works as relevant today as they were when first published.