 After graduation, she worked as a part-time journalist and a public information officer before marrying physician Donald Sumner Greene and moving with him to Boston.The couple have two grown children; it was after the birth of her daughter Carla that Greene began to write "Summer of My German Soldier".The novel took five years to complete; after two more years spent searching for a publisher and eighteen rejections, the book was published by Dial Press in 1973.