Three Gals a Week

New York: Phoenix Press. Good. (c.1942). First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [front endpaper apparently removed, with consequent cracking of front hinge; two previous owner's labels affixed to front pastedown]. Trashy romantic fiction of the sort that mostly went straight to the rental-library market. What I love about these books (apart from the so-bad-it's-sometimes-fun prose) is that the publisher's usually printed a version of the jacket blurb inside the front of the book. That's the case here, and it's so delightful that I will quote it in full: "Orchid Winters was appropriately named. Gorgeously orchidaceous, she had been trained to be ornamental and useless, and to encourage men with sizable bankrolls exclusively. Unfortunately, these gentlement did not offer marriage, and Orchid was not interested in their counter proposals. Therefore she set out to earn a living. On her way to town to look for work, Orchid's weekly gas ration gave out [there's a war on, y'see], and she was rescued by Loring Ashely, a man about town, to whom three gals a week were a mere pittance. Loring established Orchid selling perfume in an exclusive shop, and there she met Alabama Turner, a modest soldier without a thing to offer her but love." (I'm pretty sure that "Token West" was a pseudonym -- but I desperately want to believe that out there somewhere is a happy couple named Orchid Winters and Alabama Turner.) .