Strangers Are Coming

New York: Random House. Near Fine in Very Good+ dj. (c.1941). First Edition. Hardcover. [a very nice copy with minimal shelfwear, generic but colorful vintage bookplate on front pastedown; the jacket shows only mild edgewear, no significant flaws]. This "witty novel of American antagonisms and old-world traditions" is also "a delightful satire on life in an American college town [and] a stirring statement for the case of the war sufferers in our midst." The plot concerns a college football hero (and heir to some kind of fortune) who happens to be visiting Warsaw when the Nazis invade, and finds himself in a position to rescue the "Stanowski Troupe," a a motley and informal group of occasional performers, consisting of "Papa Stanowski, old-time magician; his wife Maria; the trained white mouse, Katinka; Baby Jan, whose mother had been snuffed out by a bomb; a Princess, young, beautiful, nationality unknown; and Stanislas, who, it seemed, was some kind of a Polish waiter." The young man brings them back to his hometown, which causes quite a commotion both in the community and within his tradition-bound family. The Australian-born author (1885-1959) was educated in Belgium, England and Germany, and during the 1910s was a very active suffragist in England. She began her career as a writer around 1910, and beginning 1915 many of her stories and novels were adapted for movies. After settling in the U.S. she began a long-term relationship with Dr. Sara Josephine Baker, "American physician notable for making contributions to public health, especially in the immigrant communities of New York City" (Wikipedia). Although never openly declaring herself a lesbian, Wylie did write a very unusual authobiography in 1940 (it was the book that just preceded this one), "My Life with George," in which "George" was her own subconscious ego, and in which she was pretty candid about her preference for women over men. Her very next book after this one is probably her most famous: "Keeper of the Flame," which served as the basis for the MGM film of the same name starring Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn. ***This book is among the nearly 150 items offered in ReadInk's new Catalog Number 4, "Booking Passage: Books on the Immigrant Experience." You can access this catalog and its contents in any one of three ways: (1) email us to request a PDF to be emailed to you; (2) view or download the catalog from the link on our website's main page; (3) browse the books individually (including a few that didn't make the cut for the catalog) on our website under these two subject headings: "Immigration: Fiction" and "Immigration: Non-Fiction." .