Shotguns, he specifies.Īlthough, like Winston, I grew up in Mobile, went to the same high school, and also had a distinguished lawyer dad, I never toted a gun of any kind through woods or field. It’s about the camaraderie.”Īnd, leaning against the cabinets are the guns. After publishing thousands of pages, he is an author who’s still intent on mastering new topics.Įven more than the hunt, he says “I enjoy the après-hunt. Then there are the cabinets filled with countless research books that Winston pores over for his histories.

Groom,” reads another, “thanks so much for Mama Gump!! Yours forever, Sally Field.” “Dear Mister Groom,” reads one inscription, “I can only thank you and hope you’ll forgive my irregularities in this Forrest.

Over his desk is a Forrest Gump movie poster - Forrest sitting on a bench - autographed by cast members. As he explained in the opening of his World War II book 1942, “I was not born into a family of warriors, although practically every generation of it has served in one American war or another, from the War of Independence and the War of 1812, to the Creek Indian wars and the Civil War, to the Spanish-American War and the First World War.” While his military histories - his focus in recent years - are epic narratives, he often finds a way into them through his family’s past.

Winston wrote eloquently of Major Montgomery in his most recent book, Patriotic Fire: Andrew Jackson and Jean Laffite at the Battle of New Orleans. The sword, Winston speculates, also likely belonged to his great-great-great grandfather, Elijah Montgomery, a major in the War of 1812. Thrower provided Winston with a personal connection to his Civil War history, Shrouds of Glory. On the fireplace hangs the cavalry saber that belonged to his great-grandfather Fremont Thrower, who rode with Gen. Across the computer screen unfolds the text for a history that he’s on schedule to complete this summer - a narrative of the Battle of Vicksburg together with his argument “that the war should have ended there.” On the table is a six hundred-page manuscript for a novel, El Paso, about Pancho Villa and the Mexican Revolution, which Winston’s been working on for ten years. The objects in Winston Groom’s study in the elegant Point Clear home he shares with his wife, Anne-Clinton, and their eight-year-old daughter, Carolina, provide insight into the work and sensibilities of the author of Forrest Gump and thirteen other books of fiction, memoirs, and narrative history.

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