Author Joyce Maynard's Much Deferred Return To Yale

Photo by Frank Rizzo

It’s been nearly 50 years since Joyce Maynard was a freshman at Yale University, when she wrote her 1972 cover story in The New York Times Magazine. “An Eighteen-Year-Old Looks Back on Life” was a personal, generation-defining essay that led to a relationship that would soon upend her young life and shadow her own long and accomplished career.

J.D. Salinger, the celebrated-yet-reclusive writer of the touchstone classic “The Catcher in the Rye” and other works, had seen the Times article and began an intimate correspondence with the teenager. At the end of her first year at school, Maynard dropped out of Yale — and abandoned her scholarship — to live with the writer in New Hampshire. Less than a year later, Salinger would coldly sever the relationship, and the shock and aftershocks of that abandonment would resonate with her for years.

Amid many personal and professional struggles, Maynard persevered. She raised three children as a single parent; authored 18 books including novels, memoirs and best-sellers, including “To Die For” and “Labor Day,” both which became starry films. She also established herself as an inspirational writing guru, especially for women who wanted to share their stories, too.

“But I always deeply regretted leaving Yale,” says Maynard. “I never imagined going back.”

Until now.

At 67, Maynard stil….CONTINUED