Gambler's Wife

New York: The Macmillan Company. Good+. 1931. 2nd printing. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [moderate shelfwear, small dent in top edge of front cover, tiny tears in cloth at spine ends, rubber-stamped firm name (Delaney & Kohlsaat, Beverly Hills) on front pastedown and fffep, staining to pp. 59-72]. Novel set largely in Galveston, Texas. From the dust jacket (NOT present on this copy): "Judith first met Phil Harrington at Crosby's Hotel in Smith City where she and her sister, Hallie, had gone from their Ozark cabin to work after the death of their parents. Phil was tall and lean and gentle, with a gay laugh and a devil-may-care air. Judith was very young, and even though she remembered the fervor of her father's preaching against weakness and sin, she could not fight down her love for Phil. They were married and went to Galveston, where her innocence and beauty made her useful as a lure to prospective vitims of his gambling projects. But when there was danger of exposure, he deserted her before their child was born. [The book] is a the portrait of a woman who has a tremendous power of giving, but whose own personality is never for a moment submerged by the complexities and strange confusions which surround her." The author was an essayist, novelist, and short-story writer who also published under the pseudonym "Eleanor Morton." .