J. D. Salinger, the reclusive author who wrote the novel The Catcher in the Rye, died on January 28, 2010. Salinger, who was born on January 1, 1919 in Manhattan, lived in seclusion in the small town of Cornish, New Hampshire. His novel The Catcher in the Rye caused a positive stir when it was published. It established a brand new voice in American writing, and it swiftly became an iconic book. Nine Stories, published in 1953, made Salinger a favorite amongst his critics for the way his work dismantled the conventional structure of short fiction.

A counterintelligence agent in the Second World War, JD Salinger was designated to the 12th Regiment of the 4th Division, grilling prisoners of war. He served in Europe’s most atrocious crusades, specifically in the Battle of the Bulge and D-Day. Eventually, he landed in the hospital in Germany in 1945 due to battle fatigue.

Margaret Salinger, his daughter, recounted her parents first meeting in 1950 when her English-born mother, Ms. Douglas, was 16 years old and Salinger was about 31. A few months before graduating from high school, Ms. Douglas married Salinger and she moved to Cornish with him.

Ms. Douglas revealed to her daughter that Salinger demanded elaborate meals and that she had to wash the sheets twice a week. The marriage did not last and so, in 1966 Douglas and Salinger divorced. He married his third wife, a nurse named Colleen, who was 50 years younger than him. According to Salinger’s daughter, at one point, the couple tried to have a child.

According to his daughter, JD Salinger was a good humored father who was always in a nice mood when he was entangled in the magical world of youth. For him, Margaret’s imaginary friends were real, and so were the characters he used in his books. “The world of fiction and reality were very blurred,” she wrote in her memoir.