Books: Prize Problems

THE OLD ASHBURN PLACE—Margaret Flint—Dodd, Mead ($2.50).

On the Ashburn farm near the village of Parkston, Me., there was a sloping stretch of ground to which the Ashburns retired when they wanted to think things over. Three generations of shrewd, kindly old Maine farmers had pondered there before Charlie Ashburn, but few of them faced such problems as beset homely, bald-headed Charlie. Charlie was in love with a vivacious college girl named Marian Parks. His older married brother Morris also loved her. Marian, although she was friendly with both, loved neither. Morris wife complicated things by making shameless love to high-minded, honest Charlie who became her lover. Charlie, whose ideal in life was expressed in Longfellow’s lines, Make a house where gods may dwell, Beautiful, entire, and clean, found his adulterous passion creating an impossible situation. So did his father who discovered his secret, died soon after All this was the substance of a matter-of-fact novel that won the Dodd, Mead Pictorial Review $10,000 prize contest las week. Simple to the point of bleakness ir its plot, The Old Ashburn Place goes or to recount Charlie’s gradual resignation before the complexities of life, his reconciliation with his brother, the accidental death of the erring wife that saved her from disgrace, Charlie’s graceful stepping-aside to permit Morris to marry again.

The Author. Three days before Christmas 1935, Mrs. Lester Jacobs, who writes under her maiden name, received word that she had won $10,000 with her first novel (TIME, Jan. 6). Wife of a toll-bridge keeper in Bay St. Louis, Miss., mother of six children, author of many rejected short stories, Mrs. Jacobs learned of her good fortune on her 44th birthday and on her 22nd wedding anniversary. Born in Old Town, Me., she had previously written for local newspapers. After graduation from the University of Maine, she married a classmate and went South with him to make their home. The Old Ashburn Place was written at night and during occasional free hours, took four years to complete. Planning to use her windfall to educate her children, Mrs. Jacobs visited Manhattan and Maine briefly, returned to Bay St. Louis, promptly set to work on another novel.