Salinger's Caulfield Pages Crossed Normandy

American author J.D. Salinger carried six unpublished stories about the Caulfield family when he landed in the second wave at Utah Beach on D-Day. The developing pages traveled with him through liberated Paris, the brutal fighting in the Hurtgen Forest, and the concentration camps of the Dachau system while he continued writing and revising them. Those stories eventually formed the spine of The Catcher in the Rye, while the death and trauma Salinger witnessed gave Holden Caulfield's voice greater darkness and emotional depth.

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