The Laughing Pioneer

New York: Robert M. McBride & Company. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. 1932. First Edition. Hardcover. [minimal shelfwear, spine lettering somewhat dulled; the jacket is lightly edgeworn, tanned along spine with tiny shallow chipping at both ends]. The first novel by this North Carolina-born writer (1894-1981), better known for his work as a playwright, who had received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for his 1926 play "In Abraham's Bosom." It tells of the fraught and ultimately tragic romance between a manly, wandering-minstrel sort of guy and the "handsome daughter" of a respectable Southern family -- the former representing "the music, the play and the imagination of the New South, [and the daughter] the romantic, but sterile, pride of the Old South." Alas, "both are victims of the narrow moralism of the society in which they live." One critic has observed that "despite the title and the narrator's bias, the book belongs to Alice," the daughter, and it was praised by a fellow novelist as "a combination of friendly satire, bitter social comment, rare insight, poetic expression, and powerful character portrayal," also praising Alice as "one of the most impressive women in modern fiction." .