Swamp Angel

This novel came from Dorothy Langley's experience as a teacher in southeaster Missouri in the early 1920's It was her first novel and was accepted for publication by Simon and Schuster, on the condition that is be heavily revised. It was revised, so heavily that I became another book, Mr Bramble's Buttons, in which the entire central characters were relegated to minor roles. Now the manuscript has been rescued from oblivion, and is being published for the first time. It is the story of Bertha, a strong passionate woman, caught in a wretched marriage to a bully. Of her four children, she is most involved emotionally with her oldest son. Clance, who has artistic talents and sensitivity. Bertha is caught up by the young male schoolteacher's sympathy for Clance, and all her pent-up sexual feelings are released in desire for the teacher. In the primitive rural Missouri society of sixty years ago, these feelings of Bertha's inevitably sweep the novel to a powerful and harrowing conclusion. In addition to an absorbing story.;This book presents a fascinating picture of this rural Missouri community in which everything, not least the admirably transcribed dialogue, rings true.<