Before his 21st birthday, Marvin J. Wolf walked five miles through a blizzard to pay a family debt, flunked an LAPD Internal Affairs polygraph, served as a U.S. Army drill instructor, taught hand-to-hand combat to Army officers, ran a weapons squad in cold-war South Korea, worked in a junk yard, sold encyclopedias door-to-door, and served with distinction as a delicatessen pearl diver. While serving as a First Cavalry Division combat correspondent in Vietnam, Wolf walked away from three helicopter crashes, earned a Bronze Star, Purple Heart and three Air Medals, and then a battlefield promotion to lieutenant. He later commanded a Signal Corps company. Back in civilian clothes, he became a globetrotting photojournalist; when he regained sole custody of his adolescent daughter and was forced to choose between frequent travel and single parenthood, he turned to writing. He is the author of hundreds of magazine articles, more than a dozen nonfiction works, a series of mystery novels, and several screenplays. Two of his teleplays, based on stories from his own nonfiction books, were produced as made-for-television movies. Wolf lives in Asheville, NC, with his adult daughter and a pair of ferociously lovable Chihuahuas.