Thomas Joseph Sugrue (1907–1953) was an American writer. He is best known today as the writer of There Is a River, the only biography of Edgar Cayce written during Cayce’s lifetime and the book that made the psychic a household name in 1942. He also lent his writing talents to the Edgar Cayce Association for Research and Enlightenment for numerous articles and news items. Life Thomas Sugrue was born in a house on Ward Street in Naugatuck, Connecticut, in 1907 to Michael and Mary Sugrue. He grew up in a staunch Irish Catholic background. His father worked as a mail carrier. His early memories of life in the borough's Irish section were captured in a 1940 autobiographical novel, Such Is the Kingdom, which was recast as the fictional "Kelly Hill". After graduating in 1924 from Naugatuck High School where dancing was "his favorite pastime" according to a yearbook, Sugrue worked briefly as a teller for the Naugatuck Savings Bank, before attending Washington and Lee University in Virginia, where he graduated with bachelor's and master's degrees in English. It was there he was introduced to classmate Hugh Lynn Cayce, the eldest son of Edgar and Gertrude Cayce. Edgar Cayce had the strange gift of going into a trance-like state and providing answers to questions. The subjects included diagnosis and treatment of illness, finding hidden items, universal laws, karma, and even past lives. Sugrue made the five-hour trip from Lexington to Virginia Beach with Hugh Lynn, thinking that he would debunk a fraud. After meeting Edgar Cayce, he decided that there was no deception. His first reading was given in Virginia Beach on June 7, 1927, at the request of Hugh Lynn. Sugrue worked as a reporter at the former Naugatuck Daily News, before being hired by the New York Herald Tribune newspaper. In 1934, he joined the staff of The American Magazine and wrote articles covering Athens, Egypt, Palestine, England, and more as he traveled the world. Copies of every issue of The American Magazine between 1934 and 1938 are available for view at the reference desk of the Whittemore Memorial Library in Naugatuck, Connecticut. At this point, he was taken ill from a rare arthritis disease. Innovatively treated in a clinic for weeks, he left it as a dying person with a few weeks to live. After seeking relief for his condition in Florida, Sugrue moved to Virginia Beach in