Some Came Running

Some Came Running is a novel by James Jones, published in 1958. It was Jones's second published novel, following his award-winning debut From Here to Eternity. It is the story of a war veteran with literary aspirations who returns in 1948 to his hometown of Parkman, Illinois, after a failed writing career. It is a thinly disguised autobiographical novel of Jones's experiences in his hometown of Robinson, Illinois, immediately after returning from World War II. The title alludes to the lines in Chapter 10:17 of the Gospel of St. Mark, which author James Jones used as an epigraph before the beginning of the novel. A film version starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine was released the same year and was nominated for five Academy Awards. Plot Dave Hirsh is a cynical Army veteran and an occasionally published but generally unsuccessful pre-war writer, who winds up in his hometown of Parkman, Illinois after being put on a bus in Chicago while intoxicated. Hirsh had left Parkman 19 years before when his older brother Frank placed him in a charity boarding school, and is still embittered. Frank has since married well, inherited a jewelry business from the father of his wife Agnes, and made their social status his highest priority. Dave's return threatens this, so Frank makes a fruitless stab at arranging respectability, introducing him to his friend Professor Bob French and his beautiful daughter Gwen, a schoolteacher (who are familiar with his writing). Dave, having planned to visit Parkman for only a week, impulsively decides to settle in Parkman to pursue Gwen romantically and attempt to write a novel with her help.