Tuesday, August 9, 2016

Private Duty by Faith Baldwin. Nurse's love x 3!

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Title:  Private Duty

Author:  Faith Baldwin

Storyline:  The heroine of our story, newly-minted registered nurse Carolyn Cutler, has a big problem on her hands---she wants to marry three guys!  Forget conflict of interest, Carolyn is telling herself she should tie the knot with her invalid house-bound boss, for whom she is a private duty nurse, because she feels sorry for him and loves his tender-aged son.  She also loves a surgeon at the hospital where she trained.  But does she love the doctor or just the idea of being married to one? But wait, there’s more!  Carolyn is also infatuated with a young ne’er-do-well whose claim to fame is racking up beach of promise suits because he proposes to everything in a skirt.  Apparently, the answer to these dilemmas comes to her in the midst of that frequent and much feared 1930s scourge: a labor riot!  Can’t make this stuff up, but author Faith Baldwin certainly could. Enjoy!

Copyright: 1935; this edition published March, 1941

Publisher:  Triangle Books

Format:  Cloth-bound hardcover

Page Count:  338

Author Biography:

Baldwin, Faith (b.1893–d.1978)  Faith Baldwin was a prolific writer of women’s fiction, having penned 85 books and stories.  When she died of a heart attack in 1978, she was still working, and was deemed the “doyenne of American light fiction writers” in her New York Times obituary. Some of her works were adapted into film screenplays during the golden age of Hollywood.  She also achieved fame for her advice column in the now defunct women’s magazine, Women’s Day, entitled “The Open Door,” named for an inviting door out to her garden.  Unfortunately, Faith was also slightly infamous for being party to a marketing scam of sorts.  She, and a number of other popular writers in the mid-1960s, were in the headlines for selling correspondence courses to aspiring writers. The advertising for the courses misled her customers to believe that their work would be personally reviewed by these famous writers.  An astute marketer nonetheless, having made millions on her books, rehabilitating her reputation and showing that she did care about the lowly reader may have figured into her decision to keep an extended correspondence with a young lonely girl, Kristen Houghton, who grew up to be an author of chick lit herself.  Faith, as it turns out, has achieved internet immortality on quotation websites for her pearls of wisdom such as: “Time is a dressmaker specializing in alterations” or “Character builds slowly, but it can be torn down with incredible swiftness.” (Thank you to Wiki, Kristen’s Blog in the Huffington Post about Faith, and quotation websites everywhere!)

Works Include: Mavis of Green Hill (1921), Those Difficult Years (1925). Laurel of Stonystream (1923), Magic and Mary Rose (1924), Sign Posts (1924) Poems, Thresholds (1925), Three Women (1926), Departing Wings (1927), Alimony (1928), Betty (1928), Rosalie’s Career (1928), Broadway Interlude(1929) (with Achmed Abdullah), Garden Oats (1929), Incredible Year (1929), Broadway Sensation(1930) (with Achmed Abdullah), Judy: A Story of Divine Corners (1930), Make-Believe (1930), The Office Wife (1929), Babs, A Story of Devine Corners (1931), Mary Lou, A Story of Divine Corners (1931), Skyscraper (1931), Today’s Virtue (1931), District Nurse (1932), Girl On the Make (1932)(with Achmed Abdullah), Myra, A story of Divine Corners (1932), Self-Made Woman (1932), Weekend Marriage (1932), Beauty (1933), Love’s a Puzzle (1933), White Collar Girl (1933), American Family (1934), Honor Bound (1934), Innocent Bystander(1934), Within A Year (1934), Wife vs. Secretary (1935), The Puritan Strain (1935), Men Are Such Fools! (1936), The Moon's Our Home (1936), Private Duty (1936), Heart Has Wings (1937), Manhattan Nights (1937), That Man Is Mine (1937), Twenty-Four Hours a Day (1937), Enchanted Oasis(1938), Hotel Hostess (1938), Rich Girl, Poor Girl (1938), Comet Over Broadway (1938), Career By Proxy (1939), High Road (1939), Station Wagon Set (1939), White Magic (1939), Arizona Star (1940), Letty and the Law (1940), Medical Center (1940), Rehearsal for Love (1940), Something Special (1940), And New Stars Burn (1941), Heart Remembers (1941), Temporary Address: Reno (1941), Blue Horizons (1942), Breath of Life (1942), Rest of My Life With You(1942), Washington USA (1943), You Can't Escape (1943), Change of Heart (1944), He Married a Doctor (1944), A Job for Jenny (1945), No Private Heaven (1946), Woman on Her Way (1946), Give Love the Air (1947), Sleeping Beauty (1947), An Apartment for Peggy (1948), Marry for Money (1948), Golden Shoestring(1949), For Richer, For Poorer (1949), Look Out for Liza (1950), Tell Me My Heart (1950), The Whole Armour( 1951), Juniper Tree (1952), Widow’s Walk, Variations on a Theme (1954) Poems, Face Towards the Spring (1956), Many Windows: Seasons of the Heart (1958), Three Faces of Love(1958), Blaze of sunlight (1960), Testament of Trust (1960), Harvest of Hope (1962), The West Wind (1963), Living By Faith (1964), Lonely Man (1964), The Lonely Doctor (1964), Search For Tomorrow (1966) Novelization of TV Soap Opera, Evening Star (1966), There Is a Season (1966), Velvet Hammer (1969), Take What You Want (1971), Any Village (1972), One More Time (1972), No Bed of Roses (1973), New Girl in Town (1975), Time and the Hour (1975), Hold on to Your Heart (1976), Thursday's Child (1976), Adam's Eden (1977).