A Solo in Tom-Toms

New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1946 The Viking Press, New York. 1946. Hardcover. Stated 3rd Printing. Book is tight, square, and unmarked. Book Condition: Good; small tear in spine at head; light wear/shelfwear to head, tail, and tips; bumped upper tips. No DJ. Brown grained paper over boards and spine with bright gilt lettering on the spine and front board; dark brown shadowbox on front board. Mountain scene as endpapers. Clean internals, internal hinges are sound and not split. 390 pp 8vo. The author makes his reminiscences entertaining monologue, as he writes of Denver, boyhood, and marriage; of his grandparents, his songbird mother, his high enthusiasm of his stepfather, his shopping around for a man to fill the place of the father he never knew. Then of his heroes, -- Scout Wiggins, Ivy Baldwin, Ben Lindsey, his friends- Paul Whiteman's father, Wilberforce, Jack Dempsey, John Reed, and others. There are his early jobs- working in the family store, at a taxidermist's, finally on a newspaper through which he came to know Denver in every corner. There are family feuds, his own variation on courtship and marriage, his eventual heading east where, after some 30 years, he finds his father and learns his story. A clean very presentable copy.