Watching at the Window

Indianapolis/New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc.. Very Good in Very Good- dj. (c.1955). First Edition. Hardcover. [slight fraying to cloth at base of spine, a bit of dust-soiling to top page edges; jacket edgeworn, small tears at several corners, spine faded, a few tiny tears and minor paper loss at top of spine]. First (and apparently only) novel by this Southern-born author, about a young black man who develops a fascination for a white prostitute who regularly passes through the town's "Negro quarter" as she crosses to the other side of town in search of customers. The man, Milo, is psychologically scarred from his boyhood experience of having been sent home after his mother had attempted to enroll him in an all-white school, while Vern, the woman, is dealing with the bitterness of having been abandoned by her soldier-husband, which forced her to turn to prostitution to survive. .