He 'ran through everything from serving as a United Auto Workers committeeman in a General Motors plant to playing in small hillbilly or Western orchestras, and ended as a jet-aircraft mechanic for Republic Aviation in 1954–55.'
[10] Following the wedding, the couple moved to New York City where Judy studied dance at the Metropolitan Opera School of Ballet, and Gene worked on the jet-aircraft engines while writing fiction at night.
[13] Although Caesar published outdoor stories and articles in men's magazines like True and youth publications like Boys' Life throughout the 1950s and 1960s,[14] his first successful novel, Mark of the Hunter, dates from 1953.
In Michigan in Literature, Clarence A. Andrews summarizes thus: "After he meets a young woman, Pat Brodie, [veteran Marty Jevons] is able to accept society and even conservative politics, and he achieves release from his compulsive wolf hunting."
Andrews notes that "[r]eviewers were pleased with the hunting scenes, but unhappy with the novel's larger philosophical solutions,[15] citing the opinion of Nicholas Mongo in the Saturday Review of Literature: "'When [Caesar] ascribes the dynamics of social dissatisfaction and liberal strivings wholly to sexual motivation in disguise, he robs love and politics alike of their share of will and reason.
'"[16] The Virginia Quarterly Review, on the other hand, praised the work as a "fresh and vigorous first novel, executed with commendable and comforting assurance, [in which] Mr. Caesar handles an old problem in a new way: the readjustment to civilian life of a soldier back from the war."
This popular work of natural history was billed by the Reading Eagle as an "exciting and suspenseful account of the wild predators of North America – the wolves, the bears, and the big cats,"[18] The Science News Letter, published by the Society for Science and the Public, concurred, stating that the book aims "to interest the public in the fate of these wild creatures who face extinction because they are so ruthlessly being killed in the belief that they are evil.
"[21] The New York Times described the biography as "A stirring portrait of an important character is our history," while also noting that "[a]mong the most valuable parts of Mr. Caesar's are those in which he reminds us that the life of the Mountain Man could be dirty and dull as well as dangerous and daring.
Howard Blum, in American Lightning: Terror, Mystery, and the Birth of Hollywood, recommends that "[t]hose wanting more of a feel for Burns's career should consult Gene Caesar's Incredible Detective.