That Girl [original French title: Marie Galante]

New York: The Viking Press. Very Good. 1932. First American Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [good sound copy, lightly shelfworn, minor external soiling, spine cloth a bit faded, discoloration in gutters, one-time owner's "Property of" statement handwritten on front endpaper, and the same person's signature and date on the page following the dedication page]. Novel about a young Frenchwoman who finds herself stranded, at the age of eighteen, in a remote South American port; she manages to make her way to Panama, where she takes up prostitution as a means of earning the money for her passage back to France. (You can stop thinking about Marlo Thomas now.) Her activities get her mixed up with some of the complicated international aspects of the Canal Zone, and at various times she encounters a Japanese spy, a German agent, and an American Secret Service man. One contemporary reviewer commented that the author "lays much stress on the importance of the Canal Zone to the United States of America [and other countries, and yet] one cannot help feeling that [he] regards the whole thing as just a little ludicrous and that he is privately pointing the finger of scorn at men who can allow their time to be taken up by such immense trivialities." Originally published in France in 1931 as "Marie Galante" (although in this translation she's called Chéri, which was also the title of the British edition), the book served as the basis for a 1934 American film adaptation under that title starring Spencer Tracy and Ketti Gallian, and that same year was adapted by its author for a stage musical (with music by Kurt Weill). (In the film version, not surprisingly, the heroine is not a prostitute; it was released in the latter half of 1934, so the Hays Office wouldn't be having any of that!) .