Professor Loree Rackstraw has written a book, Love as Always, Kurt (due in March), about her 40-year relationship with Kurt Vonnegut. From the Times of London:

When Slaughterhouse-Five was eventually published, in early 1969, it was hailed as an antiwar masterpiece and became a Bible for Vietnam war protesters.

As Vonnegut basked in new-found wealth and celebrity, he wrote to Rackstraw: “This hilarious rise in my spirits, originating from a deep purple depression, began with loving you.”

Much of her book charts Vonnegut’s literary progress, from battling with his personal demons – his mother committed suicide just before he departed to war – to suddenly finding everything very easy.

“One thing that troubles me is that anything I write now sells like crazy and my publishers won’t tell me honestly what they think of my work, since their opinion doesn’t mean a damn thing commercially,” he wrote to her.