Dream No More

New York: Gramercy Publishing Co.. Very Good. (c.1937). First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [a good sound copy, some shelfwear to the lower extremities, faint deterioration to cloth along both joints, modest uneven soiling to covers]. Romance novel about a beautiful young Virginia mountain girl who's "discovered" by a young college man who's out in the boonies on an errand for his father (a mine owner). Quite smitten (although it takes him the better part of the book to admit to himself that he's in love with her), he "adopts" her, arranges for his wealthy parents to pay for her education at "Mrs. Wood's Select School for Young Ladies," and monitors and encourages her educational progress and, eventually, her professional career as a musician -- turns out she's a natural on the violin, y'see -- as she moves to New York, meets a talented pianist who both mentors her and (yes) falls in love with her. As she rises to become the leader of her own orchestra, a romantic triangle develops and complicates things for everybody, although there are no real fireworks: the two guys respect each other and act honorably, for the most part, and she actually loves them both. The most interesting part of the book is the middle passage, during which the mountain girl gets educated and civilized. The author (1887-1970) seems to have had a bit of a double life: he was a founder of the Christian Children's Fund, Inc. and the director of various international child welfare organizations (I've seen reference to him as "one of the twentieth century's most successful charitable fundraisers"), but also found time to crank out quite a bit of popular fiction (including numerous mystery novels) under several pseudonyms, most notably "Richard Grant." .