The Robbed Heart

New York: L.B. Fischer. Fair in Fair dj. 1945. First Edition. Hardcover. [worn copy, some fraying to cloth at top of spine, front endpaper removed, lower corners bumped, etc.; jacket heavily edgeworn, chipped at spine ends, various small tears and scrapes, bits of paper loss at extremities, etc.]. Novel about a young New Yorker from a well-to-do family who takes up a career as a music critic -- specifically one who takes "jazz, and jazz bands, seriously. Fascinated by the vitality of jazz, he found a new zest in the raffish companionship of Harlem's obscure virtuosi of hot music, the excitement of their jam sessions in rowdy rehearsal halls. And he could afford to play angel to his Negro friends: among them Bert, whose trumpet should have been in a big-time band, and who smoked marijuana to forget that it wasn't." His immersion in the Harlem community leads him, also, into an interracial romance. .