Nothing But a Smile Book

In his utterly charming story of a World War II veteran and an enterprising pinup girl, Steve Amick has created a beautifully understated love letter to an America of harder times and simpler choices.

It's 1944, and Wink Dutton, a former illustrator for Yank and Stars and Stripes, arrives in Chicago after an injury to his drawing hand gets him discharged. Renting a room above the camera shop run by Sal Chesterton—the wife of Wink's buddy, still stationed in the Philippines—Wink is surprised to learn how Sal is making ends meet: producing pinup photos for the soldiers' girlie magazines. In fact, she's using herself as a model. When Wink becomes a partner in her covert enterprise, it's the beginning of a collaboration that is both wonderfully sexy and pure, one that not only leads to Wink’s reinvention as a photographer but also—amid the painful adjustments of the postwar world—blossoms into a subtle and unexpected romance.

Publishers Weekly

Amick's solid follow-up to The Lake, the River & the Other Lake gives the reader a remarkable portrait of postwar America. When Wink Dutton is discharged from the army in 1944, he has little to his name besides his Purple Heart. His prospects change unexpectedly, however, when he meets Sal Chesterton, who has been running her family's camera shop while her husband serves in the Pacific. With business struggling, Sal comes up with a plan: she shoots sexy self-portraits and sells them to girlie magazines. As Sal and Wink's friendship develops, she lets him in on the venture, and the pinup business keeps them afloat and provides an easy segue to a complex romance after Sal's husband is killed in combat. The backdrop is captivating in its detail, and bold in scope: Sal and Wink's story plays out against wartime struggles, the Chicago underworld of the '40s and '50s, HUAC and the Red Scare and the postwar migration of Americans from the cities to the suburbs. This divine love story is as much about Sal and Wink as it is about America in that era-a great story, well told. (Mar.)

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