SICK HEART RIVER by Buchan, John - 1941

1941. London: Hodder and Stoughton, (1941). Original green cloth, with dust jacket. First English Edition (published simultaneously with Musson's Canadian edition, three weeks after the American edition titled MOUNTAIN MEADOW). Canada gave [Buchan]... the inspiration and the setting for his last novel, SICK HEART RIVER, where he transcends the limit of the adventure story and writes his own testament... In SICK HEART RIVER, the novel that he started in 1939, he looked more closely at himself -- though at one remove. Its hero is Sir Edward Leithen, the lawyer and politician who had figured in many of the thrillers... Leithen, told he is fatally ill, goes off on a quixotic quest to rescue a man lost in the Canadian North. He spends much time looking back at his life and wondering what it all amounted to... (Smith) As if foretelling it through Leithen, Buchan died before this was published. The lettering on the spine is in silver and in blind -- no gilt, as it was wartime yet again. This is a just-about-fine copy (volume slightly askew) in a near-fine dust jacket (very minor erosion at the spine ends). Blanchard A132.