Holy Suburb

New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.. Near Fine in Very Good dj. 1941. First Edition. Hardcover. [good sound copy with minor shelfwear, light dust-soiling to top edge, a bit of discoloration to endpapers; the jacket is a little faded along the spine, with some evident wear at the spine ends, a handful of shallow nicks and tears along the top edge, modest soiling to the rear panel]. Very scarce novel set in Nebraska in the early 1900s, centering around a family of "ardent Methodists and prairie-bred Americans," whose patriarch, a "restless, handsome farmer, learning-hungry, insatiable, [who] seeks for his children the education he personally had missed," to that end enrolls two of his kids (twins) in Epworth College (a fictionalized version of Nebraska Wesleyan University, established in 1887 in what was then a separate town, University Place, which subsequently became a suburb of Lincoln). "And almost at once his unusual family find themselves caught up in the currents of a small religous college town -- handicapped by its snobberies -- whirled into its spasms of religious fervor [and] made to feel that they are interlopers in this Mecca for revivalists." A contemporary review/article in the Omaha World-Herald -- headlined "'Holy Suburb' is Obviously University Place Incognito" -- noted that the novel "catches the Nebraska spirit in a fascinating way, though it has brought down on the author some criticism." (Ya think?) The article goes on to identify the real-life counterparts of nearly all the major characters in the book, noting that "though the book is fiction, it's obvious the principals are the author's family." (The most prominent is the youngest daughter, "Ted," a tomboy who is the author's avatar.) Other interesting non-family characters are a Harvard-educated English professor, who is mocked and harrassed by the students and eventually fired after he's caught smoking a cigarette(!), and the "dignified, almost saintly chancellor" of the school, "who doesn't think study of evolution is wrong, and who is beloved of all the students." (The newspaper article identifies his real-life model as "Dewitt C. Huntington, the grand old man of Wesleyan," who was Chancellor from 1898 to 1908, and after that Chancellor Emeritus and a professor of English Bible & Ethics.) .