Miller, G. Wayne 1954–

(George Wayne Miller)

PERSONAL:

Born June 12, 1954, in Melrose, MA; son of Roger Miller (an airplane mechanic) and Mary Maraghey; married Alexis Magner (a writer and daily features editor of Providence Journal); children: Rachel, Katy, Cal. Education: Harvard University, 1976.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, RI 02902. E-mail—pascoagwriter@yahoo.com.

CAREER:

Journalist and author. North Adams Transcript, North Adams, MA, reporter, 1977-78; Cape Cod Times, Hyannis, MA, staff writer, 1978-81; Providence Journal, staff writer, writing committee chairman, and book reviewer, 1981—; TheCambridgeCompany, founder. Online serial fiction writer, 1999.

MEMBER:

Jesse Smith Memorial Library (chairman).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Prize for feature writing, American Society of Newspaper Editors; finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, 2004, for coverage of the 2003 Rhode Island night club fire.

WRITINGS:

Thunder Rise, Arbor House/Morrow (New York, NY), 1989.

The Work of Human Hands: Hardy Hendren and Surgical Wonder at Children's Hospital, Random House (New York, NY), 1993.

Coming of Age: The True Adventure of Two American Teens, Random House (New York, NY), 1995.

Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle between G.I. Joe, Barbie, and the Companies That Make Them, Times Books (New York, NY), 1998.

King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open-Heart Surgery, Time Books (New York, NY), 2000.

Men and Speed: A Wild Ride through NASCAR's Breakout Season, PublicAffairs (New York, NY), 2002.

The Xeno Chronicles: Two Years on the Frontier of Medicine Inside Harvard's Transplant Research Lab, PublicAffairs (New York, NY), 2005.

SIDELIGHTS:

G. Wayne Miller grew up in a Boston suburb, attended parochial school, and then went to a Massachusetts preparatory school where hockey was his focus. He did not make it onto the varsity team, which crushed his dreams of playing for the Boston Bruins. Instead, he became more involved in his writing and realized he had been interested in it since the third grade. Miller started writing regularly, and recalled in his Web site biography, "What I really liked to do, and it's still my first love, is fiction."

Miller graduated from Harvard University in 1976, and started working as a reporter for the North Adams Transcript a few months later. He was surprised that he got this job, stating in his Web site biography: "God know why I was hired, for I had zero experience"; he had not taken a single journalism class in college. A short time later he began working as a staff writer at the Cape Cod Times, eventually moving to the same position at the Providence Journal, where he continues to work.

Miller's interest in early Stephen King novels inspired him to seriously begin writing fiction. Several of his horror and mystery stories were published in magazines, hardcover collections of short stories, and paperback collections. He sold his first novel, Thunder Rise, in 1988 to publisher William Morrow. It tells the tale of a divorced man, who, along with his daughter, moves from New York to a small New England town. His daughter and other children in the town begin having nightmares and develop flu-like symptoms that cannot be treated medically, but a local Quidneck Indian with psychic powers claims to know the cause and the cure. Thunder Rise received mixed reviews, critic Sybil Steinberg remarking in a Publishers Weekly review that the book was an "occasionally awkward but generally well-paced and effective thriller." A Kirkus reviewer found that Miller "shows promise in scenes untied to his horror theme, especially in the warmth of his father-daughter dialogue, though even here he should have pushed harder on his delete key." In spite of the mixed reviews, Miller was pleased with the outcome, stating in his Web site biography that Thunder Rise is "an entertaining book with several of my favorite fictional characters, and my daughters think it's cool, which is good enough for me."

After the publication of Thunder Rise, an editor at Random House who had worked with Miller wrote asking if he had any ideas for nonfiction books. This inquiry led to Miller's first nonfiction book, The Work of Human Hands: Hardy Hendren and Surgical Wonder at Children's Hospital, a biography of Dr. Hardy Hendren, the chief of surgery at Children's Hospital in Boston. The book discusses new procedures developed by Hendren and his colleagues, pediatric advances, and the patients they have saved. Throughout the book Miller describes the successful story of Lucy Moore, a child born with VATER syndrome, a maldevelopment of the intestinal, genital, and cardiac systems.

Miller's third book, Coming of Age: The True Adventure of Two American Teens, was published in 1995 by Random House. Three years previous, in 1992, Miller began shadowing the lives of the Burrillville, Rhode Island, High School senior class of 1993. Miller especially focuses on Dave Bettencourt, publisher of a radical underground newspaper. In this book, Miller describes the adventures that these teens go through, and how their lives and experiences are different from those of their parents during their own teen years.

Miller's fourth book, Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle between G.I. Joe, Barbie, and the Companies That Make Them, started as a long-term project for the Providence Journal. It took five years to write the book, the longest project he had every worked on. It began in 1992, where as a staff writer for the Journal he set out to write a biography of the toy soldier, G.I. Joe. The biography turned into Toy Wars, a story of the battle between toy manufacturers. The main focus is on Hasbro and assorted problems within the company. According to Miller, after Hasbro became a publicly traded company they became more concerned with profits and stock prices than with making a high-quality toy. According to a Publishers Weekly critic, Miller is "a shrewd writer who wrings every ounce of drama from his five-year behind-the-scenes account."

King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open-Heart Surgery was published in 2000 by Times Books. It is the biography of heart surgeon C. Walton Lillehei of the University of Minnesota, who created open-heart surgery and the heart-lung machine. King of Hearts tells the story of children with congenital heart defects and how researchers and doctors used experimental efforts and surgical techniques to repair these children's hearts. A reviewer in Publishers Weekly claimed: "Miller's fast-paced and scrupulously researched account reveals both the exhilaration and the tragedy of Lillehei's story."

In a 2002 interview published on his Home Page, Miller described how he came to write Men and Speed: A Wild Ride through NASCAR's Breakout Season. "It grew out of a brainstorming lunch I had in the fall of 1999 with my longtime editor at Random House, Jon Karp…. [O]ne of the objectives of our brainstorming was to find a topic that would permit not only a literary approach but also have a good chance of selling with some intensity. I had come up with a list of 20 or so topics, and Jon went through it, stopping on NASCAR. This is it! he said." While he knew little about the sport of autoracing, Miller researched the sport heavily and gained tremendous access to NASCAR professionals. In the resulting book, Miller explains the reasons for NASCAR's huge popularity, from the speed and danger of the sport to the drivers' willingness to remain accessible to their fans. Library Journal reviewer Eric C. Shoaf praised the book as a "readable" one that "captures the many nuances of the American fascination with NASCAR racing."

For The Xeno Chronicles: Two Years on the Frontier of Medicine Inside Harvard's Transplant Research Lab, Miller returned to the field of medicine. The title refers to xenotransplantation, the process of transplanting organs from one species into the body of another. The goal of such research is to make it possible to safely transplant animal organs into humans, but many people are opposed to such research, including animal rights activists opposed to what they view as the exploitation of innocent animals for human gain. Reviewers lauded the book as a clear-eyed, balanced treatment of a provocative and controversial subject. A Science News contributor called the book a "vivid, personalized account," while Library Journal reviewer Kathy Arsenault commented that "Miller's flair for a dramatic story and a brilliant cast of characters make this a gripping read."

In addition to his nonfiction publishing and journalism career, Miller also founded and operates TheCambridgeCompany, a writing, editing, design, and publishing service that does custom work in traditional book form.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 1993, William Betty, review of The Work of Human Hands: Hardy Hendren and Surgical Wonder at Children's Hospital, p. 780; January 1, 1998, David Rouse, review of Toy Wars: The Epic Struggle between G.I. Joe, Barbie, and the Companies That Make Them, p. 755; January 1, 2000, William Betty, review of King of Hearts: The True Story of the Maverick Who Pioneered Open-Heart Surgery, p. 848; June 1, 2005, Donna Chavez, review of The Xeno Chronicles: Two Years on the Frontier of Medicine Inside Harvard's Transplant Research Lab, p. 1734.

Business Week, February 16, 1998, William C. Symonds, review of Toy Wars, p. 17.

Entertainment Weekly, June 23, 1995, Suzanne Ruta, review of Coming of Age: The True Adventure of Two American Teens, p. 48.

Forbes, January 24, 2000, review of Brave Heart, p. 170.

Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 1989, review of Thunder Rise, p. 1023; December 1, 1997, review of Toy Wars, p. 1755.

Library Journal, January, 1993, Kelly Jo Houtz, review of The Work of Human Hands, p. 156; January, 2000, Kathleen Arsenault, review of King of Hearts, p. 146; June 1, 2002, Eric C. Shoaf, review of Men and Speed: A Wild Ride through NASCAR's Breakout Season, p. 160; July 1, 2005, Kathy Arsenault, review of The Xeno Chronicles, p. 112.

New York Times, March 7, 1993, Gloria Hochman, review of The Work of Human Hands, p. 8.

Publisher Weekly, August 4, 1989, Sybil Steinberg, review of Thunder Rise, p. 82; December 7, 1992, review of The Work of Human Hands, p. 47; May 15, 1995, review of Coming of Age, p. 67; December 22, 1997, review of Toy Wars, p. 46; December 20, 1999, review of The Work of Human Hands, p. 65; April 11, 2005, review of The Xeno Chronicles, p. 41.

Science News, September 10, 2005, review of The Xeno Chronicles, p. 175.

Washington Monthly, May, 1998, James Surowiecki, review of Toy Wars, p. 46.

OTHER

G. Wayne Miller Home Page,http://www.gwaynemiller.com (March 21, 2000).

Men and Speed Web site,http://www.menandspeed.com (January, 2002).