the light burns blue

The Light Burns Blue by Sally Jones (Reynal & Hitchcock, 1947)

I bought this book on eBay because it was advertised as having “gay content.”  A very odd book.  After the suicide of her husband in glittering New York City, a woman returns to her provincial mid-western hometown to remake her life.  Her husband may have had homo tendencies and so may her son, who seems to fall in mutual love with his older tutor.  The daughter is bitter and unhappy, upset about not knowing the truth of her father’s life and death.  Some nice glimpses of middle class life directly after the war, but the book completely ignores the issues it seems to be raising, so it feels both cowardly and coy.  Still, it is interesting to find such subject matter in a novel of this period, even if it is ineptly handled.