"[1] After his discharge, he attended the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received an undergraduate degree in art and a doctorate in psychology.

Birdy was a critical and popular success and it won the US National Book Award in category First Novel.

[3] Alan Parker directed a film version starring Nicolas Cage and Matthew Modine.

After the publication of Birdy and through the early 1990s, Wharton published eight novels, including Dad and A Midnight Clear, both of which were also made into films.

In 1988, Wharton's daughter, Kate, her husband, Bill, and their two children, two-year-old Dayiel and eight-month-old Mia, were killed in a 23-car motor vehicle accident near Albany, Oregon, caused by smoke generated by grass-burning on nearby farmland.