The Summer Soldier

New York: Random House. Very Good. (c.1938). First Edition. Hardcover. (no dust jacket) [moderate shelfwear, very light bumping to several corners, a bit of soiling to edges of text block, one-time owner's signature at top of ffep]. Novel about a group of seven people who are sent down South by a New York-based civil rights organization to investigate the violent repression (including lynchings) of mill workers and sharecroppers, and are met with open hostility and worse. Zugsmith was a Kentucky-born journalist and activist who turned out a series of well-regarded proletarian novels in the 1930s; this was her final solo effort as a novelist, although she did collaborate on one additional novel, "The Visitor" (1946), with her husband, Carl Randau, who she married in 1940. Hanna 3942; cited in passing in Rideout, although Zugsmith is mostly discussed therein in connection with her earlier novel, "A Time to Remember." .