LEAVING THE NEST

Stray, little birds! Stray and be free!

With a title like Nest of Summer Widows we absolutely had to read this 1962 effort from sleaze author Francis Loren, with its cool (uncredited) cover art, but guess what? There’s no nest of widows. We took that to mean many widows. But there’s only Ellen and Carla. The story is mainly about Ellen, whose husband spends each week away while she summers at Lake Powhatan. Let’s stop for a sec. See, kids, “summering” is this thing people did—way before our time too, but we’ve read about it and seen it depicted in movies like The Seven Year Itch—where people left big cities for lake or beach regions and spent the hot months hanging around in swimsuits.

Ellen’s husband is a lawyer, but isn’t rich, which is the only measure of success she knows. She figures he doesn’t lawyer hard enough. Since he comes to the lake only on the weekends, Ellen has plenty of idle time to get oopsied into bed by rich lake resident Tony Marsh. When Marsh later offers Ellen’s hubby a lucrative job, lawyer boy hesitates because he thinks Marsh is a phony. The story finds Ellen torn between her husband and her sidepiece. Personally, we question a lawyer who’s smart enough to pass the bar but not smart enough to know a rival’s been dropping caseloads in his wife’s inbox, but whatever.

We found a few aspects of the book interesting, but the chief curiosity is how most of what happens is a direct result of alcohol consumption, including the job offer. Those lake summerers really drank (scotch-sours and martinis, mainly). We guess the idle time made a body thirsty? It’s a question we’d like to answer through firsthand experience one day. Cue the Pulp Intl. girlfriends: “You guys are thirsty 24/7. Why wouldn’t you be thirsty idle?” It seems a fair point until you read the level of boozing in this book. But since they mention it— *off to the kitchen to build a quick cocktail*

Back now. And by the way, kids, that was a pro move, relationship-wise. Whenever your girl, wife, partner, mentions that you drink a lot, make a drink. It’s a drinking game they won’t know they’re playing at first. It works best if you’re flawless in every other aspect of your relationship. Hah—we only write stuff like that so they’ll read it and roll their eyes at us. But returning to the book, Loren asks several questions that need resolution. What does a person do when their head says one thing but their sex organs say another? Is Ellen’s husband a loser? Is Marsh a phony? Will summer ever end? Oh what tangled sleaze Loren weaves.

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HISTORY REWIND

The headlines that mattered yesteryear.

1937—Carothers Patents Nylon

Wallace H. Carothers, an American chemist, inventor and the leader of organic chemistry at DuPont Corporation, receives a patent for a silk substitute fabric called nylon. Carothers was a depressive who for years carried a cyanide capsule on a watch chain in case he wanted to commit suicide, but his genius helped produce other polymers such as neoprene and polyester. He eventually did take cyanide—not in pill form, but dissolved in lemon juice—resulting in his death in late 1937.

1933—Franklin Roosevelt Survives Assassination Attempt

In Miami, Florida, Giuseppe Zangara attempts to shoot President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt, but is restrained by a crowd and, in the course of firing five wild shots, hits five people, including Chicago, Illinois Mayor Anton J. Cermak, who dies of his wounds three weeks later. Zangara is quickly tried and sentenced to eighty years in jail for attempted murder, but is later convicted of murder when Cermak dies. Zangara is sentenced to death and executed in Florida’s electric chair.

1929—Seven Men Shot Dead in Chicago

Seven people, six of them gangster rivals of Al Capone’s South Side gang, are machine gunned to death in Chicago, Illinois, in an event that would become known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Because two of the shooters were dressed as police officers, it was initially thought that police might have been responsible, but an investigation soon proved the killings were gang related. The slaughter exceeded anything yet seen in the United States at that time.

1935—Jury Finds Hauptmann Guilty

A jury in Flemington, New Jersey finds Bruno Hauptmann guilty of the 1932 kidnapping and murder of the Lindbergh baby, the son of Charles Lindbergh. Hauptmann is sentenced to death and executed in 1936. For decades, his widow Anna, fights to have his named cleared, claiming that Hauptmann did not commit the crime, and was instead a victim of prosecutorial misconduct, but her claims are ultimately dismissed in 1984 after the U.S. Supreme Court refuses to address the case.

Cover art by Roswell Keller for the 1948 Pocket Books edition of Ramona Stewart's Desert Town.
Rare Argentinian cover art for The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells.

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