The Duration

When former Los Angeles Times reporter Richard Taylor sent his novel to Charles Scribner & Sons in 1964 and it was returned unopened, he gave up. It sat in a box, still in the brown paper mailing wrapper, until his stepson discovered it in 2009.

The Duration is set on a fictional newspaper, The Observer, in San Francisco during World War II and is an interesting look at life for a 4-F reporter during and life at newspapers in the 1940s—a life Taylor lived—he spent the war in L.A. as reporter for The Times.

The hero, John Edwards divides his time between covering boring stories and drinking and having an affair with the wife of a Navy officer who is off in the Pacific Theater. Will he find love before the world finds peace?