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THE CAPTAIN'S LADY by Basil Heatter

THE CAPTAIN'S LADY

By

Pub Date: Jan. 17th, 1949
Publisher: Farrar, Straus

There's a core of bitterness in this second (?) of Heatter's books, as there was in his first, The Dim View -- a core of bitterness towards war and what it does to man, towards standards of civilization , moral, ethical and human, towards his fellow beings. Perhaps, in time, he'll work out of it. The story this time tells of a veteran who is trying to do alone what he and his dead buddy had planned to do together -- live on a boat in a Florida fishing harbor, earn a living taking parties out on charter, find a woman, and be a man among men. But Greg hadn't Lou's give and take. He had to fight for his rights, and sometimes that meant even against a woman. And the Florida town didn't want him. He made a few friends and a great many enemies. He relived- in his bitterness- moments of youthful rebellion, phases of the advertising business, whole stretches of the war, experiences with girls he thought he'd forgotten -- and recurrently his hopes and dreams and plans with Lou, who was dead in the Pacific. Crude thought and talk here, which will be distasteful to some; moments of graphic and powerful writing; and an ending in which death and fire and love are entangled -- and only a new start somewhere is possible.