In 1970, Exley's mother purchased a small house in Alexandria Bay, New York and he temporarily moved in, though he still spent time in Florida working on Pages From a Cold Island. Charlotte's home was to become Exley's home base for the next 20 years. In the fall of that year he interviewed Gloria Steinem in Key Biscayne Florida. The resulting essay, entitled "Saint Gloria & the Troll", was published in Playboy in July 1974. It earned Exley an Editorial Award for the year's best nonfiction piece. His second novel, Pages From a Cold Island, was published by Random House in 1975, to considerably less acclaim than his debut. The book primarily concerns Exley's life in Florida; an afternoon with Steinem; a semester spent teaching at the Iowa Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa; and an homage to the life and career of literary critic and author Edmund Wilson, who lived near Watertown at Talcottville in upstate New York. Last Notes From Home Exley traveled to the Hawaiian island of Lanai, where he began work on the final novel of his semi-autobiographical trilogy, Last Notes From Home. In May 1977, Rolling Stone publisher and co-founder Jann Wenner paid Exley $20,000 to publish up to six excerpts of the work-in-progress. The magazine published three excerpts, in June 1977, October 1978 and February 1979. The following year, Exley's papers were acquired by collector Robert C. Stevens and donated to the University of Rochester. In 1984, Exley's major debt was temporarily relieved when he received a Guggenheim Foundation grant of $21,000. Frank Gifford, who was portrayed as a hero and object of Exley's envy in A Fan's Notes, invited Exley to attend Super Bowl XXI in Pasadena, California, where the New York Giants defeated the Denver Broncos. Last Notes From Home was published by Random House in September 1988. The final volume in Exley's trilogy focuses on his relationship with his older brother, William, a Vietnam veteran who died in Hawaii in 1973 after a battle with cancer. Soon after, Exley began work on a spy thriller to be titled Mean Greenwich Time, but he did not come close to completing it. Final years and death Exley moved in with his aunt Frances Knapp in Alexandria Bay, and became very ill while traveling to London for a journalism assignment. After falling into poor health in late 1990 and being hospitalized with congestive