The uniquely enduring literary agent who worked for years to find a publisher for Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” and over the following decades arranged deals for everyone from true crime writer Joe McGinniss to the creators of the Berenstain Bears has died.

It took Larry Kirwan nearly 20 years to feel he truly nailed a story of how a working-class family dealt with the death of a police officer at the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.