Russell H. Greenan

Russell H. Greenan (born September 17, 1925 ) is an American author with an established readership in the U.S.A. and Europe, particularly France. His first book It Happened in Boston? was reprinted in 2003 in the U.S.A. as a 20th Century Rediscovery by Modern Library. His fourth book The Secret Life of Algernon Pendleton was made into a motion picture titled The Secret Life of Algernon in 1997.

Background

Greenan grew up in the Bronx, had a tour of duty in the US Navy, and after attending Long Island University on the G.I. Bill, went to live in Boston in the early 1950s. For several years he worked as a traveling salesman selling industrial machine parts in remote corners of New England. His savings enabled him to travel to Nice, France where he stayed for a year to write. On his return to Boston he married Flora Bratko and opened an antique shop in Harvard Square naming it The Cat and Racquet after the story by Honoré de Balzac.The business was short-lived, but the experience provided an abundance of material for his subsequent career as a writer. In 1966, by then aged 40, he left his job as a ball bearing sales manager and traveled with his wife and three children to return to Nice with the intention of taking a year to finish a novel. This work was eventually published by Random House in 1968 titled It Happened in Boston? to significant acclaim.