Marry in Anger, A Novel by Diana Gaines. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1958. 309p.

A Cinderella romance explodes on the night before the wedding in this novel of the mid-1930s. Gillian, a spunky young woman from a poor but socially prominent family, falls in love with Tom Ballew, heir to a Chicago department store fortune. When he announces that he can't go through with the wedding--he's having an affair with his brother's wife--Gillian refuses to let him go. After a stormy scene with all parties involved, a compromise is reached: The wedding will go on as planned, and the pair will give the appearance of a happily married couple for one year. The anger and tension of that day, multiplied by the frustration of days to come, provide the novel with increasing momentum which sustains interest to the end.

Tasker Martin, a novel by Diana Gaines. New York: Random House, [1950.] 342p.

Tasker Martin, Chicago railroad magnate, disappears following a party celebrating the merger of his Illinois Western Railroad with the Overland Pacific. As his wife, his mistresses, his lawyer, his doctor, and his publicity man await news of his whereabouts, each relives the portion of his life which involves Tasker. The personalities of each character, including Tasker Martin, are revealed through these flashbacks, which extend backward from 1947 into the 1920s and 1930s. Diana Gaines paints a brilliant portrait of Chicago during the gangster era, when fortunes could be made or destroyed at the whims of a half-dozen men.

Book Review Digest, 1950, p. 337-8.

Norma Ashe, A Novel by Susan Glaspell. Philadelphia [and] New York: J. B. Lippincott Company, 1942. 349p.

Mrs. Utterbach, proprietress of a run-down boardinghouse on the wrong side of town and mother of a ne'er-do-well son and rebellious daughter, contemplates her life as the result of a visit from a former friend and schoolmate. The high idealism of her school years, the love she bore for her husband during their life together, and the struggle to earn a living and raise her children after her husband's death come under close scrutiny as she tries to determine the point in her past at which the sustaining faith which had seen her through her earlier years had died. Norma Ashe is a poignant novel of youth and goals fallen victim to circumstance. It is set in an unidentified Illinois town, but locale seems of minor importance in a story basically concerned with the probing of human emotion.

Book Review Digest, 1942, p. 294.

Killer in the Kitchen, by Franklin James, [pseud.] New York: Lantern Press, Publishers, [1947.] 281p.

Mickey Richards, a young war widow visiting Chicago to settle her deceased husband's business affairs, discovers a gruesome murder. In an attempt to solve the crime, she takes on Chicago's underworld single-handed.

Book Review Digest, 1947, p. 460.

Smoldering Flames; Adventures and Emotions of a Flapper, by Clara Palmer Goetzinger. With illustrations by Glenn Sheffer. Chicago: The Zuriel Publishing Co., [1928.] 315p.

This personal diary of a sixteen-year-old flapper skitters from topic to topic, touching lightly on first one then another, but always heading in the direction of and landing heavily on LOVE. Living with her mother, whom she terms a RARE PARENT and SOME STUNNING WIDOW, Nan Livingstone lives a life of comparative freedom for an adolescent during the 1920s; and she describes it all in the boldest of 1920s slang. Whether vamping Benjamin Kenesaw Arnold, who is really SOME PUMPKINS, and only twenty years her senior; stringing along Dickie Thornton A LOVABLE-DOO-BUNK COAXER, who is both fascinating and fast; or meddling into her mother's affair with Allen J. B. Arnold, THE OLD STIFF, who, in forty years, has never once fallen victim to women's wiles, Nan approaches each new challenge with a fervor known only to youth. But the fervor cools; Benjamin marries someone else; and Nan, who has not been such a bad girl, REALLY, settles down with Whitney Harriman, and places her diary away in the PACKING TRUNK for always. The author has managed to capture the essence of youth and the spirit of 1920s Chicago in Smoldering Flames. Unfortunately, youthful zealousness becomes tedious in repetition, so that the reader begins to long for the end about midway of the novel, despite zeal, spirit, and humor.

A Man and a Woman, by Carl Grabo. New York & London: The Century Co., [1931.] 298p.

Helen Barrows, a devoted feminist and social reformer, and Brent Sidgwick, a farmer with traditional ideologies, marry even though both realize from the first that the union is a mistake. Each tries to change the other. Each tries to give in. Helen leaves. Brent follows and brings her home. They attempt to live as individuals. Each has an affair. A child, a murder, and an attack by the Ku Klux Klan eventually strain the marriage to its breaking point. Set in central Illinois in the Illinois River Valley, A Man and a Woman deals more with family adjustment than with descriptive family and farm life. Although the novel builds always toward the climactic confrontation between Sidgwick and the KKK, little Klan background is given, and the reasons for the attack seem hazy and undeserving of mob action.

Book Review Digest, 1931, p. 422.

Fallen Leaves, by Virginia Marmaduke Grear. Herrin, Illinois: Published by The Egyptian Publications, [1937.] 21p.

Sylvia Shephard's return to the family homestead after a period of time spent as a social worker in New York is awaited anxiously by the entire family; but her arrival is overshadowed by the small surprise, a child, whom she brings along. Conjecture follows explanation, and neither is satisfactory, until Sylvia and her childless sister-in-law work out the child's fate. Although no locale is named specifically the setting is believed to be southern Illinois. Fallen Leaves was awarded first place in a district short story contest sponsored by the Illinois Federation of Women's Clubs.

Grey Towers, A Campus Novel. Chicago: Covici-McGee Co., 1923. 287p.

After four years of teaching high school students, Joan Burroughs is delighted with the prospects of returning to Grey Towers, her alma mater, to teach college English. Unfortunately, Grey Towers is not at all as she remembers it. The friendly, student-centered atmosphere of the past has given way to an impersonal, highly organized bureaucracy in which the student is nothing more than a pawn, a necessity, a means to an end for faculty and administration. Student attitudes have also degenerated to a state of frivilousness and academic lethargy. Yet, both students and faculty seem self-satisfied. All of Joan's attempts at humanizing and revitalizing Grey Towers from within are met with criticism and contempt until, in despair, she gives up the fight and resigns her position. Grey Towers is a thinly disguised University of Chicago. The author, who chooses to remain anonymous, is apparently a bitterly discontented University of Chicago academic with an axe to grind. It is a pity that the author has not made better use of his talent, for a flair for writing is apparent in spite of the venomous approach to life and work.

Book Review Digest, 1923, p. 209.

Golden Fleece, A Novel by John Gunther. Author of the "Red Pavilion, " "Eden for One," Etc. New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, MDCCCCXXIX. 421p.

Sexual mores are John Gunther's major concern as he writes of Joan Tilford's liberation from the Puritanical sexual attitudes instilled in her by her parents. Unwilling to compromise her own values to hold the man she loves, Joan refuses to be Philip Hubbard's mistress until her widowed father, in a similar situation, succumbs and begins a successful second relationship without benefit of clergy. Giving in to pressures, Joan takes the initial step, which leads into a life of promiscuity. The Golden Fleece aroused considerable ire among critics, both literary and social, for the author's blasé attitudes toward sex before marriage. Yet, Gunther's shocking story of lost virginity, 1920s vintage, is mild in comparison to the scorching documentaries of 1970s Chicago girls faced with the same decisions.

Book Review Digest, 1929, p. 396.

The Red Pavilion, by John Gunther. New York and London: Harper & Brothers Publishers, MCMXXVI. 269p.

Critical commentary ranging from "genuinely sophisticated" to "d----d silly" have variously been applied to John Gunther's first literary attempt, The Red Pavilion. A book which probes the psychology of marriage among the intellectuals living in the shadows of the University of Chicago during the 1920s, The Red Pavilion is the story of Richard and Shirley Northway whose love thwarts individual creativity forcing them to live apart. Richard and Shirley's attempts at reconciliation, combined with the dilemmas of other similar individuals form the conflict of the novel. Unfortunately Gunther has written hackneyed and stereotyped characters into ordinary situations, then delivered them via unimaginative means--all in an amazing style which shames many an older and better established author.

Book Review Digest, 1927, p. 317.

Honor Divided, by Grace D. Hall and Ernesto G. Merlanti. New York, London and Edinburgh: Fleming H. Revell Company, [1935.] 224p.

See No. 493.

The Foundry, [by] Albert Halper. New York: The Viking Press, 1934. 499p.

The setting for this novel is the Fort Dearborn Electrotype Foundry of Chicago, and the chief characters are the people who work there and the machines they control--or by which they are controlled. With many characters and many sub-plots the book provides a composite, but credible group portrait of the foundry personnel in the year preceding the 1929 crash. Personal problems, including one affair which ends in suicide, are delineated against a background of foundry problems: union power, collective bargaining, and unprincipled management tactics.

Book Review Digest, 1934, p. 403-4.

Sons of the Fathers, by Albert Halper. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, [1940.] 431p.

See No. 498.

All Their Children Were Acrobats, by Harry Hamilton. Author of Banjo on My Knee. Indianapolis [and] New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Publishers, [1936.] 308p.

See No. 499.

The K-House Mystery, by Grace Trobaugh Hay. [New York.] David McKay Company, Inc., [1958.]156p.

The Easterly family, introduced by the author in her earlier novel, Seven Go to Eastcroft, is on the move again this time to DeKalb, Illinois. Hard pressed to find housing in the town, they rent a sprawling mansion, complete with blind stairways, hidden passages, and perhaps a ghost. Although the DeKalb and northern Illinois area background is well defined, the characters seem one-dimensional and the strained plot is highly unlikely.

Book Review Digest, 1959, p. 464.

Seven Go to Eastcroft, [by] Grace Trobaugh Hay. Illustrated by Sherman C. Hoeflich. Philadelphia: David McKay Company; Washington Square, [1939.] 256p.

An enterprising family turns misfortune into personal gain in this novel of farm life on the Illinois prairie during the 1930s. Determined that her family will earn its own way while her husband is in a tuberculosis sanitarium, Lucille Easterly moves with her four children to the abandoned family farm near Kankakee so that their expensive city home can be rented. As she and the children learn the rudiments of farming by the trial and error method, Ellen, the eldest daughter is falling in love, John is deciding on his future vocation, and the twins are experiencing an entirely new way of life and enjoying themselves immensely. The story is too idyllic and the characters too sweet by today's standards, but the novel offers considerable insight into 1930s farm life as experienced and viewed by the urbanite.

Broken Necks, Containing More "1001 Afternoons," by Ben Hecht. Chicago: Pascal Covici, Publisher, 1926. 344p.

Thirty short stories and sketches gathered in the author's rounds through Chicago as a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, run the gamut of city life, giving small glimpses into a multitude of Chicago incidents and characters.

CONTENTS: Broken Necks.--The Philosopher's Benefit.--Decay.--Mishkin's Idealist.--The Bomb Thrower.--A Nigger Who Was Hanged.--Dog Eat Dog.--The Imposter.--Fragments.--Melancholia Preceding Seduction.--Life.--My Last Park Bench.--Depths.--Rendezvous.--Gratitude.--The New Skyscraper.--Nocturne.--The Psychological Phantom.--Black Umbrellas.--The Wrong "Front".--The Yellow Goat.--Lenin and Wilson Talk.--The Movie Maniac.--Caricature.--The Policewoman's Daughter.--Shanghaied.--Jazz.--The Man with One Wife.--Infatuation.--The Unlovely Sin.

N. Y. Times Book Review, 12/5/1926, p. 30.

A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago, [by] Ben Hecht. Design and illustrations by Herman Rosse. Chicago: Covici-McGee, [1922.] 289p.

Sketches and human interest stories originally contributed to the Chicago Daily News by writer-reporter, Ben Hecht, constitute this collection of short, introspective Chicago memorabilia.

CONTENTS: A Self-Made Man.--An Iowa Humoresque.--An Old Audience Speaks.--Clocks and Owl Cars.--Confessions.--Coral, Amber and Jade.--Coeur De Lion and The Soup and Fish.--Dapper Pete and The Sucker Play.--Dead Warrior.--Don Quixote and His Last Windmill.--''Fa'n Ta Mig!"--Fanny.--Fantastic Lollypops.--Fog Patterns.--Grass Figures.--Ill-Humoresque.--Jazz Band Impressions.--Letters.--Meditation in E Minor.--Michigan Avenue.--Mishkin's Minyon.--Mottka.--Mr. Winkelberg.--Mrs. Rodjezke's Last Job.--Mrs. Sardotopolis' Evening Off.--Night Diary.--Nirvana.--Notes for a Tragedy.--On a Day Like This.--Ornaments.--Pandora's Box.--Pitzela's Son.--Queen Bess' Feast.--Ripples.--Satraps at Play.--Schopenhauer's Son.--Sergt. Kuzick's Waterloo.--Sociable Gamblers.--Ten-Cent Wedding Rings.--The Auctioneer's Wife.--The Dagger Venus.--The Exile.--The Great Traveler.--The Indestructible Masterpiece.--The Lake.--The Little Fop.--The Man from Yesterday.--The Man Hunt.--The Man With a Question.--The Mother.--The Pig.--The Snob.--The Soul of Sing Lee.--The Sybarite.--The Tattooer.--The Thing in the Dark.--The Watch Fixer.--The Way Home.--Thumbnail Lotharios.--Thumbs Up and Down.--To Bert Williams.--Waterfront Fancies.--Where the "Blues" Sound.--World Conquerors.--Vagabondia.

Book Review Digest, 1922, p. 250.

Somewhere the Tempest Fell, by Josephine Herbst. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1947. 344p.

As World War II draws to a close, Adam Snow, a successful Chicago mystery novelist, is jarred into the real world of the 1940s by a family crisis. Contemplating his life and the lives of his associates up to that point, Snow recognizes that each has been living a fantasy of his own design while frantically trying to reconcile dreams with reality. Somewhere the Tempest Fell contains a diverse gallery of artists and professionals, each trying to adjust to the pace of a new life style in a rapidly changing wartime Chicago.

Book Review Digest, 1947, p. 411.

Homely Lilla, by Robert Herrick. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, [1923.] 293p.

See No. 511.

The Marriotts and the Powells; A Tribal Chronicle, by Isabella Holt. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1921. 328p.

See No. 521.

A Visit to Pay, by Isabella Holt. Indianapolis [and] New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Publishers, [1939.] 329p.

The stories of two women, Katharine Sadler and Peg Morlock, vie for prominence in Isabella Holt's novel of love and family relations set in Chicago and northern Michigan during the 1930s. Placed in the same family by fate, the two women encounter similar traditions, prejudices, loves, hates, jealousies, and intrigues forming a bond between them although they have met only casually. The characters are well-drawn and believable; the setting is less well defined, but adequate.

Book Review Digest, 1939, p. 474.

It's Not My Problem, [by] Kenneth Horan. New York: Doubleday Doran & Company, Inc., 1938. 266p.

A rollicking domestic comedy set in 1930s Chicago, It's Not My Problem relates one year in the life of a young Chicago matron--wife, mother, and author--whose writing wins her a literary prize and an invitation to continue her work in Hollywood. Faced with the choice of advancing her career on the west coast or maintaining her marital status quo on the home front the heroine decides that there is no contest, and promptly occupies her time with matters far more relevant than anything she might encounter in California. The narrator definitely enjoys a joke, whether on herself or on someone else, and this particular volume, written in diary form, reveals that attribute remarkably well. She teases her husband, satirizes her sister-in-law, and jokes with her children with charming effect, but the humor which bites deepest is directed at herself.

Book Review Digest, 1938, p. 461.

Nowhere Else in the World, by Jay William Hudson. Author of "Abbe Pierre." New York [and] London: D. Appleton and Company, MCMXXIII. 383p.

Steven Kent, an idealistic young writer of the 1920s, spends two years and considerable energy reconciling his ideals with the crass, ugly world. Beginning in Paris where Kent lives a relaxed, carefree life on an allowance from his father, the author follows his hero through the disillusionment of his first teaching experience in a western university, to compromise and contentment in the Chicago which he had previously found contemptible. The compromise of Kent's ideals is achieved gradually through the writing of two novels--the first an abstract, philosophical failure; the second a realistic success--which brings Kent to the realization that there is nowhere else in the world like Chicago. There are detailed descriptions of Paris and Chicago contained within Nowhere Else in the World which indicate Hudson's thorough knowledge and abiding love of the two cities. The novel is worth reading for that reason if for no other.

Book Review Digest, 1923, p. 249.

The Old Home Town, A Novel by Rupert Hughes. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, MCMXXIV. 331p.

Sentimental and melodramatic, The Old Home Town concerns a small-town romance between Ben Webb, a shy, unsophisticated but brilliant plumber, and Olalea, niece of Mrs. Budlong, the town's most status-conscious and indisputable matchmaker. Carthage is the name of the old home town and in this story it is located directly on the Mississippi River, with a population of 15,000, every one of them counting on the success of the new dam Ben is helping to build, which promises to be the greatest in the world. When a gigantic ice jam threatens the uncompleted dam, Ben's heroism is as boundless as the raging flood waters which follow.

Book Review Digest, 1926, p.351.

Sycamore Bend: Population 1300, by Frazier Hunt. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, [1925.] 293p.

Will Hadley feels trapped in a small-town rut as editor of the Sentinel in Sycamore Bend, near Galesburg. A little clandestine romance helps him decide to try his luck in the big city. Sycamore Bend is as slow-paced as the small-town life it describes.

Book Review Digest, 1925, p. 335.

Romance of Fire, by Paul Hutchens. Wheaton, Illinois: Van Kampen Press, Inc., [1934.] 197p.

Betty Dreanard's happy childhood and youth turn nightmarish when her widowed mother marries Jaird Barloman, one of Chicago's most notorious gangsters. Her terror is compounded when she learns shortly before her stepfather's murder that one of his friends wants to marry her. The story of how she lives through this time of trial, relying on her faith in God, combines mystery-fiction and inspirational reading in an unusual and interesting manner.

Beggars Can Choose, by Margaret Weymouth Jackson. Author of Elizabeth's Tower. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Publishers, [1928.] 319p.

Ernestine Briceland, daughter of a wealthy Chicago family, and Will Todd, artist for the Chicago Sun, meet after twelve years of separation, and the friendship that they had known as children quickly blossoms into love. Ernestine's parents disapprove of the union, wanting her to marry someone who can offer her security, but she perseveres in her love, and the Bricelands eventually accept her choice in a husband. Will thoroughly enjoys his work; Ernestine delights in the freedom and new horizons formerly inaccessible in the stately family home and the exclusive girl's school; and together they savor the pleasure of living, working, and planning their future. Through their efforts they reach a measure of affluency, but choose to sacrifice their savings and adjust their ambitions when more pressing needs arise. Set in Chicago during the 1920s, Beggars Can Choose challenges the concepts of social inbreeding in a charming warm-hearted novel which avoids the old clichés prevalent in the early love story, as it contrasts marriage for security with marriage for love.

Book Review Digest,1928, p. 402-3.

Sarah Thornton, by Margaret Weymouth Jackson. Author of Jenny Fowler. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Publishers, [1933.] 310p.

See No. 538.

Alice Ann, by Clara Ingram Judson. Author of The "Mary Jane" Series, "Virginia Lee," ''The Junior Cook Book," Etc., Etc. Illustrated by John M. Foster. New York, N[ew] Y[ork and] Newark, N[ew] J[ersey:] Publishers, Barse & Co., [1928.] 300p.

The summer activities of a group of imaginative young people create the focal point for this novel of youth during the 1920s. When Alice Ann Lloyd and her friends encounter unforeseen difficulties in carrying through their summer plans for use of a convenient neighborhood lot for recreational purposes, they shift their energies to planning a city-wide summer program for youth. The story, set in an ideally middle-class Chicago lakeshore suburb, and concerning a group of unusually intelligent, industrious, and well-mannered children seems stilted and hardly relevant to present day living, while offering little of real value from the past.