Frank Slaughter

Frank Gill Slaughter (February 25, 1908 – May 17, 2001), pen-name Frank G. Slaughter, pseudonym C.V. Terry, was an American novelist and physician whose books sold more than 60 million copies. His novels drew on his own experience as a doctor and his interest in history and the Bible. Through his novels, he often introduced readers to new findings in medical research and new medical technologies. Slaughter was born in Washington, D.C., the son of Stephen Lucious Slaughter and Sarah "Sallie" Nicholson Gill. When he was about five years old, his family moved to a farm near Berea, North Carolina, which is west of Oxford, North Carolina. He earned a bachelor's degree from Trinity College (now Duke University) at 17 and went to medical school at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. He began writing fiction in 1935 while a physician at Riverside Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, paying off a $60 typewriter at $5 a month. He rewrote the manuscript of That None Should Die, a semi-autobiographical story of a young doctor, six times before Doubleday accepted it.

Several of Slaughter's novels became films, including Sangaree, made into the 1953 film of that name starring Fernando Lamas; and Doctors' Wives, made into the 1971 film Doctors' Wives starring Dyan Cannon and Gene Hackman.

Other books by Slaughter include The Purple Quest, Surgeon, U.S.A., Tomorrow's Miracle and The Scarlet Cord. Slaughter's last novel, Transplant, was published in 1987. Most of the novels credited under his C.V. Terry pseudonym were republished under his real name.

Slaughter died May 17, 2001, in Jacksonville, Florida.

William DuBois was a silent writer with Slaughter on 27 of Slaughter's historical novels.