Meet The Malones

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Lenora Mattingly Weber

1943, Thomas Y. Crowell Company

Mary Fred had just bought a horse. He was black and his name was Mr. Chips and Mary Fred was riding him home. The January wind had the moist breath of snow as it rippled the bridle reins, flapped the green scarf over Mary Fred's unruly dark hair, tugged at the end knotted under her tanned, squarish chin. She thought, "I've bought a horse." The thought could still startle her. For certainly she had not had the slightest intention of buying a horse with the money which had been sent her to buy a formal for the spring prom at school.

With this impulsive beginning we are introduced to 16-year-old Mary Fred Malone, the eldest daughter currently in residence at the ramshackle Malone house in Denver. Her widower father, Martie, is a columnist more involved in the war news than his family, leaving Mary Fred to organize the affairs of 15-year-old Johnny and 13-year-old Beany. When Martie trots off to cover the war news from Hawaii, Mary Fred decides to forgo the services of a housekeeper and split the salary between the siblings, who each have expenses: Mary Fred's upkeep of Mr. Chips, Johnny's new typewriter and Beany's remodeled bedroom. Things don't go smoothly, especially when their 19-year-old eldest sister, Elizabeth, returns home unexpectedly and sickly from a troubled pregnancy. But the two biggest cogs in the wheel of domestic harmony are Mary Fred's romance with high school hero Dike Williams (yes, I know) and the interfering kindness of their chic Philadelphia aunt.

A well-written, warm book which hits all the normal marks for books of this kind. A dead mother, a distracted father who has an intellectual yet underpaid job, a heroine who yearns to break free from drudgery but never will because she's so mentally enslaved, and a moral which rewards her slavish devotion to everyone but herself. All the males in her life spend their free time (which is plentiful, despite the fact they are forever held up as paragons of useful work) staring disapprovingly at anything she does which might be interpreted as, you know, selfish, and endlessly droning on about duty and how she'd be much happier supervising an impromptu Christmas play with pox-stricken 7-year-olds than skiing with a football hero.

I don't feel too bad for Mary Fred, though - she participates in other unsavory traditions of this breed of book. With the rest of her family, she casually scorns her neighbor, Mrs. Adams, who doesn't share the Malones's lively, warm, messy sense of what's important; Mary Fred loves to help Martie cater to a drunken old colleague, but she's indifferent and rude to the poor woman, who clearly hates living next door to a pack of obnoxious kids and their vicious dog.

It is a WWII book: Father said, looking around the table, "The fight's getting tougher. That means tougher on all of us." He wouldn't say more than that. But they knew he meant that they must give more of themselves, their work, their money. "Yes, we know," each one nodded soberly.

Yes, all right, it's war. And not just war, but THE war, the war against pure evil. But - I suspect that Martie Malone would have been like this anyway; he strikes me as a pain in the ass. He doesn't give up much. He clearly adores going off to Hawaii for work, he follows up this little lecture by lighting up his pipe, and he never seems to take a sabbatical from hectoring his womenfolk. Elizabeth, earlier, had dragged herself in off the prairie after giving birth in a shack, having been quelled by the menfolk into thinking:

"In times like these, we agreed, everyone has his own burden, and no one should add his. Don has his; Father has his; and this was mine."

I am agog to find out how this works out in divorce court; does he get custody of his war experiences while she retains full control of the children?

Other Editions

Other Books

Beany Malone

Leave It To Beany

Beany And the Beckoning Road

Beany Has A Secret Life

Make A Wish For Me

Happy Birthday, Dear Beany

The More The Merrier

A Bright Star Falls

Welcome, Stranger

Pick A New Dream

Tarry Awhile

Come Back, Wherever You Are

Something Borrowed, Something Blue

Don't Call Me Katie Rose

The Winds Of March

A New And Different Summer

Ann Porter, Nurse

Betty Baxter Anderson, il. Roberta Paflin
1942, Cupples & Leon Company

"Miss Porter, why are you entering nursing?"
Ann was prepared for the question, but it had come abruptly. She was determined not to falter. "At this time particularly," she said slowly and thoughtfully, "I think women should be of some value to the world. I don't want to be worthless. Trite as it sounds, I want to do my bit."

The time is 1942, during the Second World War, but Ann's comment has a more personal side. Yes, there is a desperate need for nurses both overseas and at home, but she has a more personal, secret reason for wanting to be of value. The chic, beautiful brunette startles her new friends at the nursing Training School with her wardrobe, her awkwardness with household chores, and her secrecy, but she's friendly and quickly forms good relations with sporty Texan Marge Nelson, shy Carol Kane, and handsome intern Robert Coran. She also forms a nasty enmity with scheming redhead Lita Wilson, who also wants Robert, and who quickly realizes Ann has something to hide.

Ann and Marge find an abandoned baby on the hospital doorstep, and take an interest in his fate as he's taken in and operated on for a clubbed foot. Junior, as the infant is dubbed, provides a link between Ann and Dr. Coran, a link encouraged by everyone but Lita and the strict no nurse/intern fraternization rules.

An interesting story with good pace and appealing characters. The writing is better than many series books, without being exceptional. Most notable lacks are very little sense of place, and some stilted dialogue. The mystery of who Ann is, and why she is hiding her identity, is fairly engrossing, but while the revelation is satisfactory, the wrap-up is not. One unique item is the mention of the Amana colonies near the nursing school, and the girls' visit there. And Anderson has a very nice talent for making domestic scenes warm and desirable. For example:

The thoughtful Winchesters had lit a fire in the little iron stove in the warming shack and left a plate of sandwiches and a thermos of hot coffee. "There's enough food for a half dozen," Ann thought. "It was certainly sweet of them."

About the author
1908-1966

An Iowa native who later moved to California. Anderson wrote twenty books for children and teens.

Other books by Author
Peggy Wayne: Sky Girl 1941
Connie Benton, Reporter 1941
Nancy Blake, Copywriter 1942
Julie Brent Of The WAAC 1943
Four Girls And A Radio 1944
Holly Saunders, Designer 1947

Children's Books
Secret Of The Old Books 1952
Curtain Call For Connie 1953
Adventures In 4H 1938
Alabama Raider 1957
Powder Monkey 1962

Links
University of Iowa Library, special collection
Amana Colonies

With A High Heart
Adele de Leeuw
1945, The Macmillan Company

The weather was unseasonably warm for late May, and even this early in the morning there was a leaden quality to the air. Her hair stuck to her neck, her fresh cotton print was mussed from the crowded bus trip, and her newly laundered white gloves had a black streak across the palm where she had clutched the handrail.

It's a steamy New Jersey summer, and librarian-in-training Anne McLane is angrily headed to her first day working at the shabby little rural library in Tilden instead of the gleaming state-of-the-art facility in Claredon. Furious at the assignment, she resists the job at first but soon her natural competitiveness and drive reassert themselves over the summer. These qualities also make her question her romance with easy-going Lt. Rex Elliott, whose lack of ambition troubles her, particularly compared to hard-working farmer Matthew English.

What's the use of planning?" he demanded. "People plan like mad... and what happens? Along comes a war, or something equally catastrophic, and where are their plans? Knocked into a cocked hat. Nope, it's better to drift along with the stream. If it throws you up on some pleasant shore, O.K. If not--" There was a shrug in his voice. "At least you aren't disappointed.

Rex, so light-hearted on the surface and so cynical underneath, won't do for our heroine, who burns to accomplish something. So even though she resents young English for lecturing her, she loves his matching interest in remaking the world. Which will of course require remaking, if the war ever ends. It dominates their lives in a kind of dull, endless way, with gas shortages and ration boards and the sheer numbers game of men.

And one librarian, the indifferent Rilla, has an airman fiance who is, inevitably, killed in action.

No one even knew that the telephone had rung until Rilla's piercing shriek cut through the air, stilling their laughter as if they had been stabbed.

Rilla's goal in life was to marry and have a family; with her love stolen from her, she's devastated. Anne's thoughtful about that, sympathetic but secretly thinking that this re-emphasizes to her the importance and meaning of work, that work could fill the place of people.

For a woman whose contemplations on a friend who's lost her lover is that it's too bad she doesn't have work to sustain her, Anne's pretty good at scooping up the available men in a time when men are thin on the homeground. She starts the book with Rex, an officer stationed at Fort Kilmer (Dix), and ends up with Matthew, a farmer exempt from soldiering. In between, she ferrets away at her job with the avidness of a Lutheran working his way toward heaven.

Anne decides between her men, befriends a blinded veteran, discovers the value of her shabby little library and realizes the true potential of the mousy little librarian who is actually nicknamed Mouse. Despite my mockery, it's a pretty good book. Anne's a strong, intelligent character, the writing evokes a lost rural New Jersey and an America on the verge of becoming a superpower, and the ending satisfies.