The Crystal Icicle, [by] Katherine Keith. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, [1930.] 287p.

A love triangle develops as Hal Muir realizes that Nancy, his wife of seven years, is frigid; but that Joan Peal, who works for the same newspaper as he, isn't. Troubled by his desires, he confesses to Nancy, who resorts to hysteria and threatens to leave him. As tensions mount, the affair begins to wear itself out, and Hal settles down contentedly with Nancy, who at just the proper moment, has become pregnant. Mrs. Adler's basic theme is somewhat overworked, but her style, her choice of words, and her characterization are impeccable. Although no locale is mentioned by nature, descriptions of Chicago's downtown area, the Gothic arches of the Tribune Tower, and the Muir's farm home on the prairie are so graphic that they leave no question of an Illinois setting.

Book Review Digest, 1930, p. 570.

All the Year Round, by Dorothy Aldis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company; The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1938. 245p.

Mrs. Conover sometimes finds life in the city overwhelming; and, on such occasions, derives comfort from retreating to the family's country home to contemplate her problems undisturbed. All the Year Round spans such a period in Mrs. Conover's life, as she withdraws to consider family tensions and realizes that her husband's drinking and the children's rebellion are reactions against her own nagging and fretting. The adverse influence of the city is very apparent in this novel of family life set in Chicago during the 1930s. The major criticism of Mrs. Aldis' presentation is the simple solution she offers for life's complex problems. Her characters are human, compassionate, tender, and thoroughly believable; her style is a delight; and her story presents a universal theme with wide appeal.

Book Review Digest, 1938, p. 12.

Their Own Apartment, by Dorothy Aldis. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, [1935.] 240p.

When Ann Emmett marries Clifford McLevaine, she gains more than a husband, she gains an entire family. Leaving the serenity of a home where she has been an only child, she finds herself suddenly overwhelmed by her husband's large, boisterous family, when she and Clifford decide to live temporarily with the McLevaines in order to avoid the stifling heat of a summer in a small Chicago apartment. As the move to their apartment is postponed, first by illness, then pregnancy, then her father's death, its reality becomes more and more remote. Their Own Apartment is the story of Ann Emmett's adjustment to a new husband, a new home, and a new life. Mrs. Aldis, in her gentle, quiet manner, gives a refreshing view of everyday life in Chicago during the Depression years.

Book Review Digest, 1935, p. 9-10.

Time at Her Heels, [by] Dorothy Aldis. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1937. 236p.

In her calm, ladylike style, Dorothy Aldis relates one hectic day in the life of Mary Strong--wife, mother, nursemaid, friend, lover. The day begins routinely as Mary awakens and goes through the ritual of getting her husband off to work and the children off to school. During the rest of the day, she ministers to her ill laundress, attends a Christmas pageant at the school, puts in an appearance at the funeral of a deceased friend, fends off the advances of a determined admirer, intercedes in a disagreement between old Uncle Edgar and his nurse, and ends the day by attending a birthday party in her own honor. Set in Chicago during the Depression of the 1930s, the novel bypasses the problems associated with that era to concern itself with the less weighty but very real affairs of a typical wife and mother. Time at Her Heels is light, friendly, very domestic, and an absolute joy to read.

Book Review Digest,1937, p. 10.

The Last Carousel, [by] Nelson Algren. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, [1973.] 435p.

A collection of thirty-seven stories, letters, essays, and poems representing Nelson Algren's literary career from the 1940s through 1972 are gathered here into one convenient volume. More that half of the items have previously appeared in print, although many have been revised and up-dated. Fourteen of the thirty-seven stories and sketches deal specifically with Illinois, while many of the others include scattered references to Algren's home state. Stories of special interest to users of this bibliography are: "Dark Came Early in That Country," "The Mad Laundress of Dingdong-Daddyland," "The Leak That Defied the Books," "I Know They'll Like Me in Saigon," "Previous Days," "The Passion of Upside-Down-Emil: A Story from Life's Other Side," "Merry Christmas Mr. Mark," "I Guess You Fellows Just Don't Want Me," "Everything Inside Is a Penny," "The Ryebread Trees of Spring," "Different Clowns for Different Towns," "Go! Go! Go! Forty Years Ago," "Ballet for Opening Day: The Swede Was a Hard Guy," and "A Ticket on Skoronski."

CONTENTS: Dark Came Early in That Country.--Could World War I Have Been a Mistake?--Otto Preminger's Strange Suspenders.--I Never Hollered Cheezit the Cops.--The Mad Laundress of Dingdong-Daddyland.--The Leak That Defied the Books.--Tinkle Hinkle and the Footnote King.--Hand in Hand Through the Greenery; With the Grabstand Clowns of Arts and Letters.--Come In If You Love Money.--Brave Bulls of Sidi Yahya.--I Know They'll Like Me in Saigon.--Airy Persiflage on the Heaving Deep.--No Cumshaw No Rickshaw.--Letter from Saigon.--What Country Do You Think You're In?--Police and Mama-sans Get It All.--Poor Girls of Kowloon.--After the Buffalo.--The Cortez Gang.--The House of the Hundred Grassfires.--Previous Days.--Epitaph: The Man with the Golden Arm.--The Passion of Upside-Down-Emil: A Story from Life's Other Side.--Merry Christmas Mr. Mark.--I Guess You Fellows Just Don't Want Me.--Everything Inside Is a Penny.--The Ryebread Trees of Spring.--Different Clowns for Different Towns.--Go! Go! Go! Forty Years Ago.--Ballet for Opening Day: The Swede Was a Hard Guy.--A Ticket on Skoronski.--Ode to an Absconding Bookie.--Bullring of the Summer Night.--Moon of the Arfy Darfy.--Watch Out for Daddy.--The Last Carousel.--Tricks Out of Times Long Gone.

Book Review Digest, 1973, p. 15.

The Neon Wilderness, [by] Nelson Algren. Garden City N[ew] Y[ork:] Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1947. 286p.

Realistic to an extreme, The Neon Wilderness recreates the drudgery of the day-to-day existence of the lost inhabitants of Chicago's slums. Eighteen short stories, each more depressing than the previous one, round out this sordid but arresting collection of representative Algren fiction.

CONTENTS: The Captain Has Bad Dreams.--How the Devil Came Down Division Street.--Is Your Name Joe?--Depend on Aunt Elly.--Stickman's Laughter.--A Lot You Got to Holler.--Poor Man's Pennies.--The Face on the Barroom Floor.--The Brothers' House.--Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone.--He Swung and He Missed.--El Presidente de Mejico.--Kingdom City to Cairo.--The Children.--Pero Venceremos.--No Man's Laughter.--Design for Departure.--So Help Me.

Book Review Digest, 1947, p. 12.

Never Come Morning, by Nelson Algren. With an Introduction by Richard Wright. New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, [1942.] 284p.

This important novel provoked strong reactions when first published. With brutal and convincing realism, it tells the sordid story of Bruno "Lefty" Bicek, a young pugilist of Polish extraction as he struggles to break into professional boxing from an environment in which crime is the normal way of life. The hopelessness of the situation becomes more and more apparent as Bruno is picked up on a suspected murder charge and his girlfriend is forced into prostitution. The harsh portrayal of life on Chicago's south side, in the police lockup, and in the brothel provides an unforgettable and moving documentary.

Book Review Digest, 1942, p. 13.

Somebody in Boots, A Novel by Nelson Algren. New York: The Vanguard Press [1935.] 322p.

Born in a shanty on the Mexican side of a Texas boarder town, Cass McKay succumbs to the pressures of his environment, and at fifteen hops a freight to New Orleans. Wandering from place to place searching for work, for his next meal, for a place to sleep, Cass becomes one of the thousands of homeless young people aimlessly roaming the country during the Depression of the 1930s. Cass eventually finds his way to Chicago where he joins the throngs of poor and unemployable waiting in bread lines and making the rounds of the flop houses. This hard hitting novel of the Depression years is a moving portrait of a life of poverty written by one of Illinois' greatest modern novelists.

Book Review Digest, 1935, p. 12-13.

The Great Tradition, by Marjorie Hill Allee. With illustrations by C. LeRoy Baldridge. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company; The Riverside Press Cambridge, [1937.] 205p.

The great tradition of which Mrs. Allee has written so seriously is the tradition of scholarship at the University of Chicago. Fresh from her farm home in Indiana, Merritt Lane enrolls at the University of Chicago and agrees to share an apartment with four other coeds. Avoiding the frivolity typical of many college stories, The Great Tradition recounts Merritt's adjustment to the city, to college life, to the pressures of college scholarship, and to communal living. Written in 1937, the novel will prove somewhat outdated and too serious for the average reader, although it offers a good description of college life at the University of Chicago during the 1930s.

Book Review Digest, 1937, p. 13.

The House, [by] Marjorie Hill Allee. Illustrated by Helen Blair. [Boston:] Houghton Mifflin Company; The Riverside Press Cambridge, [1944.] 181p.

A sequel to The Great Tradition, this continuation of Merritt Lane's story is set in pre-World War II Chicago. Merritt's move into a large cooperative house with several other young people provides the plot for this story of adjustment. A major crisis arises when an Oriental girl applies for admission to the house, but prejudices are overcome and the girl is accepted. Although The House is from a different era and may seem quaint by today's standards the subjects, cooperative living and prejudice, are still fresh and vital issues.

Book Review Digest, 1944, p. 12.

The Wake, [by] Steve Allen. Garden City. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1972. 177p.

Ma Scanlan is dead at eighty-six. As her children gather in Chicago for the wake, the character of each is revealed and the emotional forces which drove each away from home again come into play. The soul of the first and second generation Irish-American is laid bare in this glimpse of Chicago during the great Depression.

Kirkus, 9/1/1972, p. 1041. Publishers Weekly, 9/25/1972, p. 49.

Grandma's Garden, [by] Allen W. Otis, [pseud.] New York, Washington, and Hollywood: Vantage Press, [1974.] 202p.

Tall tales, short stories, a bit of history and reminiscence are combined into a readable but confused conglomerate of fact and fiction about Wayne County, Illinois, and the people who live there. The author, a long-time resident of the county, has collected legends, lore, tales, and stories of south-central Illinois for over thirty years, and nothing delights him more than a responsive audience with which to share them. Grandma's Garden, his first published work is the result of his recording on paper the stories he has collected and loved. They are happy, home-grown tales representing a piece of Illinois' culture that is quickly becoming unrecorded history. The book needs organization and polish, but its lack of literary finesse is compensated for by the author's enthusiasm and originality.

Horses and Men; Tales, long and short, from our American life, by Sherwood Anderson. New York: B. W. Huebsch, Inc., MCMXXIII. 347p.

Beautifully poetic. the nine short stories in Horses and Men attest to Anderson's command of the written word, and to his stature as a writer. Four of the stories, "The Triumph of a Modern," "A Chicago Hamlet," "Milk Bottles," and "The Man's Story," have Illinois backgrounds.

CONTENTS: I'm a Fool.--The Triumph of a Modern.--"Unused".--A Chicago Hamlet.--The Man Who Became a Woman.--Milk Bottles.--The Sad Horn Blowers.--The Man's Story.--An Ohio Pagan.

Book Review Digest, 1923, p. 11.

The Triumph of the Egg; A Book of Impressions from American Life in Tales and Poems, by Sherwood Anderson. In Clay by Tennessee Mitchell ... Photographs by Eugene Hutchinson. New York: B. W. Huebsch, Inc., MCMXXI. 269p.

See No. 277.

Glamor; a novel about ten million dollars by Robert Andrews. New York: The John Day Company, [1931.] 280p.

A few advance copies of the novel, Windfall, were published and distributed under the title, Glamor.

If I Had a Million, by Robert Andrews. New York: Triangle Books, [1940.] 280p.

If I Had a Million is the title of the paperback edition of the story originally published under the title Windfall.

Legend of a Lady; The Story of Rita Martin, by Robert Hardy Andrews. New York: Coward-McCann, Inc., [1949.] 342p.

One of radio and television's most prolific writers of soap operas takes the reader behind the scenes in this expose of the commercial advertising business which makes the soap opera possible. When Rita Martin joins the Chicago-based advertising firm of Franklin-Hosmer-Denby during the Depression, she desires nothing more than success. To this ambition she sacrifices not only herself, but her marriage, her happiness, and ultimately the life of her son. The death of the child causes her to reevaluate the frantic, bitter, grasping world of which she is a part, and is the key to her own salvation.

Book Review Digest, 1949, p. 19.

One Girl Found; A Sequel to "Three Girls Lost," by Robert D. Andrews. Author of Three Girls Lost. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, [1930.] 246p.

A sequel to Andrews' earlier novel, Three Girls Lost, One Girl Found continues the adventures of Marcia Talent, an Oregon beauty come to Chicago in search of a new life. Having suffered a financial setback when duped of her savings by a swindler, Marcia relies on her feminine charms to see her through the bad times until she can organize a modeling school. However, the gentlemen who receive her attentions have plans of their own, and Marcia becomes involved with the Chicago underworld, illicit liquor traffic, and two men, each of whom thinks she will make him the perfect wife.

The Stolen Husband, A Chicago Novel, by Robert D. Andrews. Author of Three Girls Lost [and] One Girl Found. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, [1931.] 238p.

When Nancy Wayne discovers that her husband of little more than a year is unfaithful, she resolves to leave him and return to Chicago where she worked as a stenographer prior to her marriage. But the transition is not as easy as she has imagined, particularly when she assumes responsibility for an older lady with a similar marital upset, becomes involved with a gangster who is marked for extermination, and discovers that her husband is about to be arrested for fraud. The plot smacks of mid-afternoon soap opera, but the Chicago locale is authentic and quite representative of the city around 1930.

Three Girls Lost, by Robert D. Andrews. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, [1930.] 284p.

Three brave country girls, Marcia Talent from Oregon, Edna Best from South Dakota, and Norene McCann from Nebraska, meet on their separate journeys to Chicago in search of fame and fortune, and decide to cling together for security's sake. But even presenting a united front, they find that city life is overwhelming, for fame eludes the theater usher, fortunes accumulate slowly at $22.50 per week, and security gives way to panic as Marcia becomes involved in a murder, Edna experiences the wrath of a vengeful wife, and Norene fights valiantly to free the man she loves of a false murder charge.

Windfall; a novel about ten million dollars, by Robert Andrews. New York: The John Day Company, [1931.] 280p.

Everyone, at sometime, has wished for an unobtainable sum of money. From his deathbed, multimillionaire John Gould plays a diabolical joke by granting this wish to ten unsuspecting souls. At his death, the ten people, chosen at random from the Chicago city directory, are each bequeathed $1,000,000. Each of the heirs--a prostitute, a business man, a child, a housewife, a poet, a blind prizefighter, a secretary, a shoe manufacturer, a stock broker, and a convict--uses the money to forward his own ambitions, but not one succeeds in either accomplishing good or gaining personal satisfaction from the unexpected legacy. Set in Chicago during the late 1920s. Windfall offers a close look into the psyches of ten Chicago inhabitants, comparing their reactions to economic and social pressures when offered an opportunity for change.

Book Review Digest, 1931, p. 25.

The World's Fair Murders, by John Ashenhurst. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company; The Riverside Press Cambridge, 1933. 256p.

The murder of a foreign scientist while he is making a speech at Chicago's World Century of Progress, intrigues reporter Al Bennett, for neither he nor anyone else in the audience sees the gunman or hears the shot. Probing deeper into the case, Bennett is confronted with a second murder and then a third. A perky female reporter adds another dimension to a thrilling novel.

Book Review Digest, 1933, p35.

Yet... He Was a Gentleman, by Grace J. Austin. [Bloomington, Illinois: Pantagraph Press,] Copyright, 1940. 120p.

Peter Fenton, millionaire civic leader and descendant of one of Fentonia, Illinois' founding fathers, is a benevolent dictator who runs the city with a generous but firm hand. When a conflict arises between the president of the local college and one of the newly appointed faculty members--a man of Russian background who is teaching radical views--Fenton plays the part of mediator, beginning a friendship and setting into motion a chain of events which ends with his election to the Presidency of the United States. This insignificant little novel is romanticized and highly improbable.