This is what is known about Jack McMorrow:

He grew up in New York City, where his father was an entomologist at the Museum of Natural History. After college, he climbed the newspaper ladder until he was hired by the New York Times as a metro reporter. He soon gained a reputation for going where other reporters wouldn't, reporting on life on New York streets in the mean 1980s. He was becoming the golden boy of the newsroom when he stumbled, failing to disclose his friendship with a police source (Cover Story). Reprimanded by his editors, McMorrow set off for Maine to do a story on a small-town weekly newspaper in Androscoggin. He's lived in Maine ever since.

McMorrow lives on the Dump Road in Prosperity, Maine, a tinytown in inland Waldo County. When he's not working as a stringer for the New York Times or the Boston Globe, McMorrow roams the woods, reads books, cutswood with his closest friend, ex-Marine Clair Varney. McMorrow has been with Roxanne Masterson, a child protective worker for the State of Maine, for several years. Roxanne has seen it all, which is a good thing, living with McMorrow.

He has a reputation for tenacity, both in his journalism,and in his need to ferret out the truth. McMorrow also isn't afraid to become physically involved in his stories and to retaliate with force when threatened or attacked. Consider this exchange in Home Body (June 2004). Police are interviewing McMorrow after he has rescued a street kid who was being abused by an older hoodlum.