Time at her Heels

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. Near Fine in Good dj. (c.1937). Later Printing. Hardcover. [a good sound book, minor bump to lower rear corner, faint dust-soiling to top of text block; jacket is heavily edgeworn, long vertical crease in spine, tears at spine extremities, a bit of paper loss at top right corner of rear panel]. "Women's fiction" with a vengeance, depicting a day in the life of a 35-year-old matron: "A sick servant, an unworldly husband, a querulous, rich uncle, the incessant demands of her children, the funeral of a friend, the importunities of a would-be lover -- these are some of the things that Mary Strong must deal with between bed and bed." (A good thing her name is Strong, I'd say.) The author, a Chicago native, was primarily a writer of children's poetry and juvenile fiction; this seems to have been her first novel for an adult audience, and it was followed the next year by another piece of women's fiction, "All the Year Round," but with a somewhat grimmer theme, that of a woman coping with an alcoholic husband. .