Jack Matthews (22 July 1925 – 28 November 2013) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright and former professor. He published 7 novels, 11 story collections, a novella, and 8 volumes of essays. He was an avid book collector, and many of his book finds served as a basis for his essays and the historical topics he explored in his fiction. His 1972 novel The Charisma Campaigns was nominated by Walker Percy for the National Book Award. He has often made 19th century America and the Civil War period the setting for his fiction, starting with his 1981 novel Sassafras and most recently with the 2011 novel Gambler's Nephew (which tells the story of how an abolitionist accidentally kills an escaped slave) and a 2015 story collection Soldier Boys: Tales of the Civil War. His plays have been performed at multiple theaters around the country. Life Jack Matthews (born John Harold Matthews) was born in Columbus, Ohio in 1925. According to a 2009 interview, Matthews "had a wonderful childhood and didn’t know there was a Depression. My father was an attorney, born on a farm in Gallia County, Ohio, who studied law under a country judge, passed the bar and eventually had his own law firm in Columbus." He served with the Coast Guard between 1943-5, working as "a radioman on the Coast Guard Cutter Maclaine in the North Pacific, on anti-submarine patrol out of Sitka & Juneau. It was wonderful, for this was the very sea that Wolf Larsen (a character from the [Sea-Wolf]) sailed in." According to a biographical profile written by critic Stanley Lindberg, Matthews studied at The Ohio State University in Columbus between 1945-9 and 1952-4 where he received a B.A. in classics and English in 1949; in 1954 he received his M.A. in English from the same university. After college, Matthews worked at various jobs that “gave me an excuse to knock on doors.” That included selling things door to door as a Fuller Brush Man and selling encyclopedias. For a short time he worked as a private detective and later as a produce warehouseman. While he and wife were raising two daughters, he worked 9 years with the Post Office on afternoons and nights; that gave him time to write and attend graduate classes in the morning. During the 1950s he worked as a post office clerk, and from 1959, he started