The Rivers are Frozen
By Nea Colton
NY 1942 First edition Coward McCann.
The Rivers Are Frozen is a 1942 novel by Nea Colton that tells the love story of an American girl and a Basque man. The novel provides a portrait of Basque culture and was published by Coward-McCann.
MARIANNE HAUSER REVIEW NY TIMES 1942.
In a quiet, unassuming way this novel helps us recognize what we are fighting for. It is very much a book of our time, though neither a war book nor a political story. It does not attempt to analyze fascism. Yet at the end one knows quite clearly why the fascists must not win this war.
Simply speaking, it is a love story, and as it is so decidedly a love story not of yesterday but of today and tomorrow, its message comes off richer than the plot. Which does not mean that the plot is thin, for if it were it could not carry such a fine, strong message.
Miss Colton tells about simple people living their daily lives in New York. The war in Europe, though it has not come to them officially as yet, is influencing their lives and changing them. Soldiers are being drafted. Shopkeepers, mothers, office girls watch the country get ready to meet the threat of fascism which the Spaniards, back home from their own war, have experienced first hand.
Nea Colton builds her story around a young girl whose restlessness and pessimism are typical for a time when all basic social values, a home, personal safety and security seem more unreal than a dream. Leonora has nothing of the fiction heroine. She is like thousands of other New York girls, neither too intellectual nor sentimental. Her boy friend, for whom she doesn't care too much, has gone to Europe to fight in the British Army. She has a furnished room, works for a living and wonders at times why she should live at all, though there is nothing particularly neurotic about her. At first she works for a charity organization at $35 a week, which seems a fantastic salary to her. Later she loses her job and is broke for a while until she finds work as a cashier in a Spanish restaurant.
Binding: Hard cover without dust jacket
Book Condition: Fairly good condition. Some stains on the front cover. Some minor signs of aging on some of the pages. As per photos.
Edition: 1942
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