Paton volunteered for military service with the British Commonwealth forces during World War II, but was refused by the South African authorities. After the war he took a journey, at his own expense, to tour correctional facilities across the world. He toured Scandinavia, Britain, continental Europe, Canada, and the United States. During his time in Norway, he began work on his seminal novel Cry, the Beloved Country, which he completed over the course of his journey, finishing it on Christmas Eve in San Francisco in 1946. There, he met Aubrey and Marigold Burns, who read his manuscript and found a publisher: the editor Maxwell Perkins, noted for editing novels of Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, guided Paton's first novel through publication with Scribner's.
