Emilie Glen (1906-1995) was best known as a poet, but she started her writing career in fiction, first published in H.L. Mencken’s The American Mercury, Prairie Schooner, and other magazines. In these nineteen short stories, Glen presents a portrait of mid-20th century America, using penetrating character portraits to show a world already nearly-gone, its customs and manners as odd to some of us as those of an Amazonian people. A keen observer of manners and of the human drama, Emilie Glen centers sometimes on family drama: a high-stakes croquet game among heirs, the prize a Bermuda resort hotel; a mother and daughter competing for the same man; an Irish mother and daughter trapped in poverty in Hells’ Kitchen, each wanting the best ; and a wealthy matron in the Hamptons determined to stop her son from marrying a Latina girl. From a time when religion ruled the heartland, Glen writes about a town struggling with the worst preacher ever; a minister fired for his liberal values during the McCarthy era; and a woman forced to choose between becoming a minister’s wife, or being ordained herself to take over her father’s church. Other stories are wonderful character portraits: a country woman whose life is changed when she comes into possession of the Encyclopaedia Britannica; a bored office worker with a secret hobby of purse-snatching; a businessman who would rather be a street beggar; the man determined to be top of the pecking order among the Central Park bird-watchers; a young girl determined to get her first ballet shoes; a dancer locked in a fierce rivalry and obsession over a Siamese cat; a husband and wife living off the earnings of a child model; an industrialist whose entire existence is defined by ladies’ feet; and a desperate song-writer knocking on the doors of music publishers. This volume also includes From This Window, Glen’s experiment in prose poetry.
