Nothing But a Smile: A Novel

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.