Gypsy Goes to College

New York: The Junior Literary Guild and Random House. Very Good+ in Very Good+ dj. (c.1941). Book Club Edition?. Hardcover. [some wear to cloth at both ends of spine, otherwise a nice clean copy with only light shelfwear, minor discoloration at top and bottom edges of both pastedowns and endpapers; the jacket shows a bit of light wear along the top and bottom edges (slightly more pronounced at the spine ends), with a couple of tiny closed tears]. (pen and ink drawings) A gypsy girl promises her dying father that she will go to college; she does, and has a tough time fitting in. "Mizela cannot help but look upon the Gajos, as gypsies call civilized people, and her own folk through different eyes." Then she meets "a handsome, attractive Gajo"; you figure it out from there. I haven't been able to uncover much about this author, other than the fact that she was born in Des Moines, Iowa, graduated from Ohio Wesley University, studied at Columbia University, and taught high school in English in Puerto Rico. Whatever her personal background might have been, she clearly decided that "gypsy life" was going to be one of her go-to subjects: she wrote at least five other books for older juveniles in that vein, with titles like "Tara, Daughter of the Gypsies," "Jasper, the Gypsy Dog" and "Gypsy Luck." .