Open Then the Door

New York: William Morrow & Company. Very Good+ in Very Good dj. 1942. First Edition. Hardcover. [modest shelfwear, very faint dampstain on top edge of text block, one-time owner's neat signature and date of purchase on ffep; shallow chipping at spine ends, a couple of other little edge-nicks]. The author's first (and apparently only) novel, set in Flushing, N.Y., about a young couple struggling to make it through the Depression after the husband loses his job as a magazine editor. The New York Times reviewer called it "a really appealing first novel [that] is light, modest in scale, not startlingly original, but [having] a quality of warmth and truth and naturalness that is rather rare." The author had published some poetry and quite a bit of magazine fiction prior to this book, and according to her jacket-blurb biography had "worked at a great variety of jobs -- usherette, chorus girl, real estate agent, lingerie saleswoman, artist's model. Her hobbies are equally numerous -- hunting, music, football, fishing." (Her husband, Georges Carousso, was also a magazine-fiction writer.) .