I Jerry Take Thee Joan

New York: A.L. Burt Company. Very Good. (c.1931). Reprint. Hardcover. NOISBN . (no dust jacket) [moderate wear at extremities, light surface deterioration of binding at front hinge, a little spotting on top edge; original jacket blurb trimmed and affixed to front pastedown, one-time owner's pencil signature on ffep]. "This story of JERRY and JOAN, their marriage and their poignant attempts at adjustment to life and to each other in the hurly-burly of the Chicago newspaper world, is the winner of the $3,000 College Novel Prize offered by Doubleday, Doran and College Humor. It is ultra-modern and terribly sincere. Without being at all sentimental, it gives one a catch in the throat in compassion for these two young people who know so little about life and abuse it so recklessly." The author, only 24 when her novel was published, was an Iowa native who later lived in Chicago, and had graduated from the University of Alabama in 1929. She soon decamped for Hollywood, where her book was adapted by Paramount for their 1932 release MERRILY WE GO TO HELL, directed by Dorothy Arzner and starring Sylvia Sidney and Fredric March. According to a Los Angeles Times article in April 1931, she expressed her "hope to live in California always, but that will depend on how my writing takes." Apparently, not so well: barely a year later she ran off to Reno to marry an accountant, after which they settled in Napa (hey, at least it was in California), and as an author she was never heard from again apart from a published short story or two. A scarce book in any edition, held by only seven libraries worldwide according to OCLC. .