an ambitious enterprise and an exceptionally compelling story told with feeling and facility. . . . Foster, a Seattle reporter, chooses a member of his profession for his central figure. Shelby Thrall, a disillusioned idealist at 30, reviews three generations of Thralls in an attempt to recapture the meaning of the "American Dream." Shelby's recollections, stirred by a pile of old, crumbling letters in the attic, cover a span of three generations . . . . Two books followed — To Remember at Midnight (1938) and House Above the River (1946). About his final book, The Dusty Godmother (1949), reviewer A.C. Spectorsky wrote in the New York Times that Foster had expanded a slick-magazine short story into a light novel which disappoints largely because it has frequent and unfulfilled intimations and overtones of being far more than just that. Garrigues wrote in 1957 after Foster's death that when Foster "had done penance to his father by The American Dream, he had done all he had to do. . . . he had written himself out when he made peace with his father, who was dead; after that, he drank himself to death trying to find something that was not in him." Filmography Fireside Theatre, "Second Elopement," story, 1954 Hallmark Hall of Fame, The Big Build Up," story, 1952 Studio One in Hollywood, "The Dusty Godmother," story, 1950 Collaborated with Winston Miller on the writing of Titanic for Selznick International. References External links Sketch of Michael Foster in the Los Angeles Times, page C7, November 20, 1938 1904 births 1956 deaths 20th-century American novelists American cartoonists American male journalists 20th-century American journalists American male novelists Writers from Arkansas Writers from California People from Sharp County, Arkansas 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American non-fiction writers