Walk Away from 'Em

New York: Coward-McCann, Inc.. Near Fine in Very Good dj. (c.1941). First Edition. Hardcover. [nice bright clean book, just a trace of wear to extremities; jacket shows a little wear and minor paper loss at spine corners, a few other tiny closed tears, 2.5" split at bottom of front foldover (very unobtrusive)]. If there's such a genre as He-Man Fiction, this would be a prime exemplar. It's the story of "Nicky Wayne, army test pilot, trans-Atlantic flyer, owner of a private landing field and of airplanes which he rents out, with or without himself as pilot." And what kind of a man's man would he be without a few dames on the string to make his life "complicated and exciting"? He's got three, in fact: "Jo, his wealthy and beautiful divorced wife; Fran, who loves him, and, fearing she will lose him, is dissipating her beauty and vitality; [and] Toddy Fate, very young, very alluring, very dangerous." (With a name like Toddy Fate, she'd damn well better be young, alluring and dangerous.) A native of El Paso, Texas, the author quit high school and ran off to Canada to join the Royal Flying Corps during World War I, and at the conclusion of the war he spent two years flying with the Kosciuszko Squadron in Poland. Returning to the States, he worked a variety of he-man type odd jobs -- miner, professional wrestler, newspaperman, stunt flyer (just to keep his hand in) -- and along about the late Twenties began selling aviation and western stories to the pulps. This was his first and only novel. .