Showing posts with label Penny Parrish series. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Penny Parrish series. Show all posts

The Reluctant Heart by Janet Lambert (1950)

Penny Parrish, glamourous, successful young Broadway star, didn't want the part! Even though Josh, her husband-manager, had undertaken to produce the play with her in the leading role, still Penny preferred the country and the two babies. Let Neda, beautiful little schemer that she was, play the part; she, Penny, was happily safe in her love, her home, her children--and there she would stay.

That she was being selfish never entered her pretty head. That Josh missed the gay, enthusiastic, ambitious young actress he had married five years earlier just never occurred to Penny until it was almost too late.

What roughly awakened her to danger, what swept the play to success makes such fascinating reading that Janet Lambert's older group of readers will find THE RELUCTANT HEART especially interesting. (from the inside flap)

The Reluctant Heart opens with Penny gardening at her home in the country. Now 26 and the mother of two, she is enjoying life at home while Josh toils away in the big city in the theater. Trudy, though, is not approving of "be-kind-to-Penny day." While Mrs. and Colonel Parrish are away in Germany, it falls to Trudy to tell Penny all about herself.

Re-Reading Janet Lambert (Part Two - The Tippy and Alcie Years)

The world is still slightly too much with me, so I am spending my August re-reading and writing about the books of Janet Lambert. So far, I've made my way through the first ten or so in the locket series, which comprises the army-life adventures of the Parrish and Jordon families (as well as a little Candy Kane thrown in).

The first part of this reading project took me through the adventures of Penny Parrish as she grows up, finds her career, marries producer/playwright Josh MacDonald and starts a family. We also meet Carrol, Penny's rich and beautiful friend who marries Penny's brother David and starts a family of her own. We also get introduced to the Jordons, and Jenifer, the eldest, who takes care of the whole large and complicated  family.

Re-reading Janet Lambert (Part One)

The first ten Janet Lamberts, or so.
(from the author's collection, hee)
The world is slightly too much with me, so I am spending my August re-reading and writing about the books of Janet Lambert. In addition to the detailed posts on each novel, I'm updating this post as I make my way through the series.

Although Janet Lambert has written a ton of books (Stories about teenagers...written specially for teenagers), her books about the Parrish, Jordon and the Kane families are the books I've loved since I was a child. Set (and written) during World War II and after, they encompass the world of the U.S. Army as well as the world of American Theater. What could be better?

Up Goes the Curtain by Janet Lambert (1946)

No young girl who ever has longed to know the mystery of the world behind the footlights will be able to put down this new story about Penny Parrish and her first exciting experiences on Broadway.

After working hard all summer in a stock company, Penny finds herself in the cast of the show, The Robin's Nest, due to open on Broadway. There she meets Josh Macdonald, the blunt, weary-looking stage manager, who takes a keen interest in her success as an actress--although he is surprisingly indifferent to her as an attractive young girl!

Practically Perfect by Janet Lambert (1947)

Now Penny Parrish must make a choice. Who will it be? Is she going to marry Michael Drayton? Or will it be handsome Terry Hayes? Or how about Josh MacDonald, her manager? In this book we find Penny, again in the theater, making more and more friends, deciding against Hollywood, and dividing her time busily between the family home on Governors Island, where her father is in command, and her sister-in-law Carrol's apartment in New York.

Glory Be by Janet Lambert (1943)

In Glory Be! Penny and her friend Carrol encounter more serious grown-up problems, but they never lose any of their charm, wit, and sense of excitement with life. The story opens with Penny's eighteenth birthday party, which is followed by a shopping trip into New York with Carrol. The carefree time of the girls is interrupted, however, by the tragedy of Pearl Harbor. From that fateful day, events move fast for the Parrish and Houghton families. The lives of the girls are suddenly transformed and they need all the character and courage they have built up to face the uncertainties and heartbreaks that war brings. With unique understanding of a young girl's heart, Janet Lambert shows how the girls meet tragedy and come through with a deeper maturity.

Dreams of Glory by Janet Lambert

Here again is another story of the adventures of the irrepressible Penny Parrish and her delightful family. By one of those happy accidents best known to fiction, Major Parrish has been transferred from Fort Arden, Kansas, to West Point, where all concerned can keep an eye on David, the family's cadet. And happily, Penny's friend Carrol Houghton lives in an enormous barn of a place not far up the Hudson from the Point. So it is not surprising that the two girls are together constantly.

Star-Spangled Summer by Janet Lambert (1941)

"Poor little rich girl Carrol hasn't been having a nickel's worth of fun.  But then she's invited to spend a summer with Penny Parrish--and things really start to happen!  Her first horse show.  Her first formal dance.  A moonlight picnic.  Summer suddently becomes a joy-filled season, bringing friendship . . . and love." (back cover - 1972 edition)

I have three editions of Star-Spangled Summer, one hardcover from 1941, and two Scholastic paperbacks: one from 1961 (shown above) and one from 1972, which is the one I grew up reading.  This innocuous little paperback introduced me to (as the back cover of my 1941 edition reads): "Stories about teenagers . . . written specially for teenagers.  The Famous Janet Lambert books for girls."  Star-Spangled Summer is the first in a sprawling series of books in which characters in two army families repeatedly intertwine--and marry.  You can find a partial listing of the series here.  Enough introduction!  On to the story!

As the novel begins, Carrol and Penny are on the train, heading to the army post where Penny's family lives for a visit.  They had recently met when Penny was visiting family in the city.  Carrol lives with her grandmother, and hardly sees her cold, rich father, so this visit to Penny's rowdy, big family will be quite a change. And they are rowdy, as we see when the whole family piles out of the station wagon, from Major Parrish to his wife Marjory ("attractive in a red-gold gypsy kind of way"), rambunctious children Bobby and Tippy, to handsome older brother David.  Don't forget colored olderly Williams and dear cook Trudy (who is a well-drawn, complex character--despite the "lands" and the "laws"). 

Carrol settles into her visit, getting to know the rituals of the post, and life among a group of fun-loving kids.  She goes riding with David, and they become friends despite her earlier contention that he was "terribly conceited."  The group plans a scavenger hunt that takes them all over the post--including to an attractive young officer's quarters.  Drama ensues when Carrol gets a large, unsolicited check and a cold letter from her father which Penny's jealous friend Louise discovers and badmouths her as a snob.  But it all works out.  But Penny has a plan--to reunite father and daughter.

The next big event (after a horse show) is the hop, or the dance on the post. 
"There were no formal programmes.  Someone asked you for a dance--and away you went.  When the first encore began it was sink or swim, for anyone could cut.  If you were popular you danced joyfully from one pair of arms to another and if you weren't, you probably went home and cried yourself to sleep."
Carrol's father does come to visit the family at the post, but he's cold and difficult to know.  Things change, though, after the moonlight picnic.  Mean girl Louise angles with Carrol's father for an invite to New York (not knowing that Carrol lives with her grandmother, not her father) and then Louise's horse acts up, and suddenly "Carrol lay on the ground, very white and still, and blood was trickling slowly down her forehead."  Despite being kicked in the head by a horse, Carrol recovers, reunites with her father who invites her to live in New York with him, and since David is on his way to West Point, they all fly off together in a private plane.  On to the next adventure!

There's no other word for these books than charming.  They are filled with engaging characters--Penny in particular is a hoot--and strong relationships, especially among the family.  The depiction of 1940s life, as well as pre-war army life, is so vivid you'd swear you were there.  I'll let the book jacket of the 1941 edition sum it all for me:

"A happy, wholesome story, full of high excitement, gaiety and keen humor.  The girls are delightful, the young men gallant--West Point bound.  Girls, and boys too, in their early teens are certain to find this tale of modern American army life absorbingly entertaining."