Bring Home the Bride

New York: William Morrow & Company. Very Good. 1940. First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [solid copy, some dust-darkening to top edge of text block, browning to spine cloth and paper spine label; halftone photograph of the very mannish-looking author neatly affixed to front pastedown, one-time owner's signature and date at bottom of ffep]. A "straight" novel, you might say, by an author whose somewhat slender literary reputation rests almost entirely on two of her earlier, lesbian-themed works, We Too Are Drifting (1935) and Torchlight to Valhalla (1938). The plot here concerns the love between Carol and Hans -- "Carol, sophisticated, exquisitely beautiful, with a fearless, cool mind that faced every reality, had known many men but never before loved. Hans, almost a hermit, bitter, haunted by a tragic secret, was only as honest as a romantic can be." (Whatever that's supposed to mean; do they mean "honest as only a romantic can be"? I'll bet he's not all that honest about that "tragic secret" thing.) [These quotes are from the dust jacket, by the way, which is NOT present on this particular copy of the book.] .