Way of Life

New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 1947. Hardcover. Fine/Very Good. Boston: Little, Brown, 1947. 1st Edition 1st Printing. Fine Dust Jacket.Very Good. Stated First Edition. Signed by the author on the inside blank page. Book is clean, unmarked with little wear. Dust Jacket has some small tears and creases along the edges. 346 pages. An Anglo-American love story, framed in bitter, sometimes factual chapter headings, wherein American Corporal Bill Thatcher, feeling at home in British Little Minchen, loses his heart to Minchen, daughter of a World War I veteran. This is the detailed diary of their love, from their hurried marriage before D-Day and Bill's part in the invasion, to the birth of their baby, and the end of the war. Bill, with high resolves to work for a better world, is embittered by the loss of his fingers which wrecks his dreams of a musical career, and it is Minchen, carrying his child, and hoping to keep alive his music, who bears the burden of his self-searching. A personalized story, with a heavy emphasis on the backgrounds and results of both wars, on the necessary gestures to be made by those who have fought for the peace. An emotional hold substantiated by documented characters, this is however not advanced by its heavy propaganda. ABEEE