What Clouds There Were Were White

If America had a heart, one might call it Brooklyn. This story is a small piece of that heart, told with verve by a young girl who dreams of becoming a writer. In these pages, she records her travel from fourteen through "e;sweet sixteen"e; (1929-1930), mixing the routines of her neighborhood life in Flatbush with poems, radio song lyrics, her love of books, regular trips to the theater to watch the latest "e;pictures,"e; illustrations of her Jazz Age clothes, and her romantic notions about boys. Here, at the beginning of the Depression, she reluctantly shortens her education to learn marketable skills at a business schooltyping, shorthand, letter-writingand finds her first job in Manhattan at a fan manufacturing firm for $15/week. Though the novel she is co-writing with her girl friend is ultimately burned in the winter woods, this, the truer, fuller story, survives. It is, at heart, a coming-of-ages narrative. Posthumously published, this book finally fulfills her girlhood dream.