Psyche

Toronto/New York/London: Longmans, Green and Company. Near Fine in Very Good dj. 1959. 1st Edition (stated). Hardcover. [minor wear to extremities, spine slightly turned; jacket a little edgeworn, tiny paper loss at a couple of corners, one-inch closed tear at top of front panel, small tear and associated creasing at top rear flap-fold]. First novel by this Canadian author, a psychological suspense novel (sort of) that's kicked off by the kidnapping of a two-year-old girl, who is almost immediately abandoned by her kidnapper following a car accident, and eventually deposited on the doorstep of the shack of a miner and his wife. The book isn't any kind of police-procedural or traditional hunt-for-the-missing-girl novel, though -- rather, it's a portrait of the girl herself (Psyche is her name, although it's unclear if that was her actual given name) and "her search for herself through the vicissitudes -- fascinating, moving, often hair-raising, and sometimes sardonically humorous -- of her strange, fantastically chequered formative years," as she grows to young adulthood under the care of her involuntary adoptive parents. A film adaptation was announced in 1961, which was to have been directed by Victor Saville and to star Susannah York, but the movie was never made. .