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PAY, PACK AND FOLLOW by Inglis Fletcher Kirkus Star

PAY, PACK AND FOLLOW

By

Pub Date: June 1st, 1959
Publisher: Holt

A delightfully unpretentious and informal autobiography is this recall of a full life by one of America's best loved historical novelists. Many of her admirers will want to know the woman behind the stories- and they will find her a warm and likable human being. Many others- aspiring writers themselves- will discover in her analyses of her techniques of writing, her philosophy as a writer, her unassuming but sound advice to young writers, and her critical approach to her own methods of research-much that will be helpful and inspiring. And still others, to whom her books are relatively unfamiliar, will find this in itself an adventure story of a career as the wife of a mining engineer, called upon some twenty times to ""pay, pack and follow"", as jobs moved her husband from one place to another. Life in primitive mining camps- and relatively luxurious ones was as exciting as the life of some of her heroines. And bit by bit, experience added to experience laid a groundwork for her own career:- a story here, constant letter writing to keep in touch, publicity work during the war, contact with people whose lives carried her in imagination to distant places. Africa finally materialized for her- and out of it came her first book, a juvenile, and her talent was stirred. The Carolina series demanded travel and research, which extended from the Huntington Library in California to the British Museum, and eventually to buying the home in North Carolina where she now lives and whence her family came-and the roots were laid for the stories she wrote. Good reading which should prove a widely popular woman's autobiography.