Robert Cormier
Born on the 17th of January, 1925, in Leominster, Massachusetts, as the second child in a group of siblings that would eventually reach a total of eight, Robert experienced an early life of constant relocation but never left his hometown. Even when he became independent and successful, he still didn’t leave Leominster properly, living only around 20 miles from it in a summer house.
Cormier’s first signs of work can be spotted as early as relative infancy, when his poetry was seen as praiseworthy at St. Cecilia’s Parochial School. A nun had encouraged him to write a poem and this may have sparked his greater fascination with the world of literature. Cormier’s first properly published work would come soon after when he was a freshman at Fitchburg State College and a professor, Florence Conlon, sent his stories to a magazine without his permission or knowledge for $75.
Cormier’s first true jabs at the world of work can be seen in his radio commercial scripts and then onto the realm of journalism and never stopped even after finding fame. It was the book ‘Now and at the Hour’, published in 1960, that made him a full-time writer and he chose to focus on problems facing the young folk in their modern society with works such as The Chocolate War and After the First Death.
Cormier passed away on the 2nd of November, 2000, due to a blood clot.
Heroes
Heroes is a 1998 novel written by Robert Cormier. The novel is centred on the character Francis Cassavant, who has just returned to his childhood home of Frenchtown, Monument, from serving in the Second World War in France and has severe deformities as a result of an incident during the war. The structure of the novel involves the use of flashbacks to Francis’s childhood in Frenchtown and the events in Frenchtown following the war, when Francis returns.