Now For Nola (1970)

Now For Nola

Lee Priestley, il. Catherine H. Scholz (cover)

1970, Julian Mesner

Nola sighed. "Why won't you believe I can stay in love?"

"Because you're such a kid. You've still got peanut butter and jelly on your face. How do you know you're ready to be a wife?"

19-year-old Nola Foret has spent her post-high school months exasperating her airline executive father by taking up and abandoning a series of interests including her latest passion, drama school. When Pa puts his foot down, Nola is startled but agrees to begin working at the air freight office at his airport. Which is where she meets Tom Cartwright.

He was tall and tanned and too thin. Sun-streaked hair, brown eyes flecked with green, a strong chin and an amused mouth... His uniform and his captain's bars looked shiny new, but he had a jaunty assurance that matched his winged insignia.

Tom's 25, a career soldier with an engineering degree who's working on helicopter modifications for the Vietnam war zone he's recently left. He comes from a line of career servicemen, a fact that Nola doesn't initially consider. It's love at first sight for both of them, but Tom's more cautious, realizing his young girlfriend doesn't realize exactly what she'd be getting into as a military wife. Or, considering her track record as a flibbertygibbit, as a wife, period. As her father throws at her, early on,

"I've lost track of how often you've lauched out on a great wave of enthusiasm and then paddled back to shore when the going got tough."

But Nola charges ahead. She persuades Tom to agree to marriage now rather than later, and joins him on the ragged little airbase of Bitter Lake. Now, with Tom busy and her wealthy family far away, Nola discovers how much she'll need to change if she's to make this new life a success. First order of the day - quit annoying the Colonel's wife.

Fran sighed. "I keep forgetting this is your first post. Listen, honey. When the Colonel's Lady says, "Hop!" all the officer's wives make like frogs."

Nola's struggles to fit in, to find a meaning and a purpose and settle to a task for more than 12 seconds, make a satisfying read. The crossover aspects between the classic old-school romances and the Vietnam era makes it an interesting one. Conversations refer more explicitly to sex - one serviceman's wife says, with practical frankness, "We don't do such a good business in hatching stuff since The Pill. That playpen came in last month and it's still here." Nola deliberately attempts to make the military chaplain at the R&R base in Honolulu think she's pregnant, to get his support in her surprise arrival to marry Tom. And there are other examples of a widening world. Nola's nearest neighbor on the base is a black girl, Fran, who quickly tells her a lot of facts of military wife life. Nola's father the executive believes all girls need to be able to support themselves, just in case.

But at the core, it's still an old-style plot with pre-Vietnam values. Early on, Nola dismisses a previous boyfriend, who went into grad school to avoid the draft:

"Then it occured to him he might get drafted out of that real fine job, and bang! he's against the war... I don't think I'd like getting shot at any more than he does, but it seems to me he's playing both ends against the middle...if you're going to take all the goodies the system provides - an education, a good job, all that - shouldn't you be willing to do your share to keep the system going?"

Other Books

Young Adult

Tour To Romance (1978)

Believe In Spring (1964)

Because Of Rainbows

The Sound of Always

Children's

Mee-Yow (1968)

Rocket Mouse (1966)

A Teacher For Tibby (1960)

The Two Too Twins (1966)

Two Stories About Kate and Kitty

Short Stories

She wrote many short stories for publications such as Thrilling Ranch Stories, Texas Rangers, and Giant Western. A list is available at The Fiction Mags Index here

Nonfiction

Journeys Of Faith (bio)

Billy the Kid: The Good Side of a Bad Man

Within Sound of the Bugle

About the Author

(1904-1999)

Raised in Kansas, Priestley went to New Mexico in 1947 with husband Orville to run the Las Cruces Sun-News. They owned the newspaper until 1970.

A Second Look For Avis (1961)

A Second Look For Avis

Lee Priestley, il. Don Lambo (cover)

1961, Julian Messner, Inc.

Every year her own position worsened, Avis thought. Her mother and sister took her more and more for granted as the provider, resented more and more her dictates as to spending. The problems of plugging holes in the family financial dike got little help from Lucie and Stella. Their feeling about making ends meet was that if one ignored the annoying gap some miracle might bridge it.

The sleepy Louisiana town of Valcourville is beautiful to outsiders, an old place lost in time. But to several members of the Barton family, ownership of one of the town's gracious homes has been nothing but a trap. 22-year-old Avis Barton is the latest victim.

When her father (a frustrated poet who planned for her to live the dream he never achieved) died, she put her own dreams on hold to keep her family together. Her mother Lucie is an impractical southern belle who resents any responsibility, and her younger sister Stella has been raised in her likeness. Avis has managed to continue her college studies nearby, but the implication is that she's only doing so to earn more money as a teacher in the local school system. But after a few years of sacrifice, Avis is fed up. She is starting to see only too clearly how her mother sees the future; Stella married off, and Lucie merrily continuing her spendthrift ways supported by her dutiful eldest daughter who, she'll confide to friends, was never very interested in marriage.

The return of a childhood admirer, Paul Guidry, and a newcomer, Tracy Warren, set up an interesting situation with Avis and her flirtatious little sister. But the real problem Avis faces is how to deal with the financial and power situation in her family. Her sister and mother are being selfish, she realizes, but her own 'noble sacrifice' is rooted partly in disdain for them. Avis, her daddy's girl, places tremendous value in brains and social class, which she can't quite overcome even when she desperately wants to, as when she visits Paul's Cajun family, and she tends to undervalue other people's strengths.

An interesting book where the romance is nearly incidental to the heroine's resolution of her own personal problems. The atmosphere is nice, with details that convey a sense of living in an old southern town in a house that's crumbling genteely around your ears, but doesn't become a cartoon.

Bending over the marble hollow of the basin in the bathroom, Avis squeezed lather through her hair. Winding the wet brown length at the back of her head, she straightened with a care for the graceful swan faucets. They could deal a numbing blow. She asked herself how the Valcour sisters had managed their famous tresses in this antique skull-cracker; but then, it would be easy with body servants to soap and lave with pitchers of rain water.

Interesting touches include the presence of a Syrian family in town.

Other books

Teen

The Sound Of Always

Rocket To The Stars

Now For Nola

Believe In Spring (1964)

Children's

Rocket Mouse

Because Of Rainbows

A Teacher For Tibby

About the Author

Born in Kansas, she was a teacher.