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Youngblood Hawke is a novel by American writer Herman Wouk about the rise and fall of a young writer. It is based on the life of Thomas Wolfe.

Youngblood Hawke is the story of Arthur Youngblood Hawke, an ex-Navy man who comes to New York to publish his first great novel, Alms for Oblivion. Originally a poor young man from Hovey, Kentucky, Arthur is the son of a dead literary minded man and a good mother who sniffs out her own fortune via the scalping of family relations. Hawke's mastery of the written word and his hunt for wealth come from this mating.

While publishing his first novel, he falls in with a married woman, Frieda Winter, with whom he maintains an emotionally tumultuous engagement for too long. Meanwhile, in the course of his writing career and his affair, he carries a torch for Jeanne Green, his editor. Over continents and over a surprisingly short number of years, Arthur Hawke feverishly pens five novels.

His fame carries with it great wealth but Arthur has a weakness for building wealth fast. He gets involved with Scott Hoag, a builder from his own town, who gives him the opportunity to become a venture capitalist. In a few short years, Arthur overextends himself and becomes seriously in debt.

In the end, he works himself to death between the money he owes (if only a break could have come to him sooner); jealousy over Jeanne, the love of his life, who married once to spite him; and the tragedy of the males in Frieda Winter's family. A head trauma from his days of coal trucking in Hovey also comes into play. Surrounding and soon after his death, Jeanne gives herself over to him, the millions come in, and his work regains its critical acclaim, after a Pulitzer Prize win and tremendous rumors.