The Giant Joshua Hardcover - 1941

Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1941. First edition. Hardcover. Very Good +/Very good. 637pp. Octavo [21 cm] Bright green cloth covered boards with blue ink stamped titles on the spine and front board. There is a minor scuff mark to the foot of the text block at the fore-edge, and there is a previous owner's bookplate on the front pastedown. In a very attractive dust jacket, with sunning to the spine and front panel (title and illustration still bold), and a small abraded area to the reverse (not visible). Also on the reverse of the jacket, is the date "Jan 18 1941" stamped in ink. A Literary Fellowship Prize Novel, and a novel of Southern Utah and the Mormons. From the dust jacket- "'The Giant Joshua' is a magnificent panorama of a stirring period. But its real fascination lies in the character of Clory herself. Clory's family had turned Mormon when she was a little girl; and after the death of her parents she had been brought up by Abijah, a stern man who loved his God even more than he loved his two wives and six sons. At the outset of the Dixie Mission, she is 'sealed' to Abijah as his third wife. Innocent, tender, courageous, bewildered at the lustiness of Abijah and at the jealousy of his harsh first wife, Clory is torn between fear of Abijah and love for Freeborn, his eldest son; between her passionate faith in the stern tenets of Mormonism and her equally passionate desire for beauty and gaiety. "Maurine Whipple, a native of St. George, Utah, has made her novel a living document of pioneer life.