Butternut

New York: Vantage Press. (c.1955). First Edition. Hardcover. [moderately worn, light fraying to cloth at base of spine and bottom corners, a little fading around top front hinge, ffep corner-clipped, bottom corners of a few pages near the end of the book are bent/creased; jacket edgeworn and rubbed/scuffed, spine sunned, several tears and associated creasing along top edge, large chip at top left-hand corner of front panel (just missing the title)]. Scarce vanity-press novel by a WWII veteran, written in "Ozark Mountain speech, a dialect rich in old English words and colorful, striking phrases." It tells the story of "young Tad, whose brother Rafe has fallen in an early battle of World War II, in France, [and who] sets forth to bring the dead soldier's body back to the hills. Tad joins the Army as the easiest way to accomplish his purpose. Thereafter his battle experiences, his relations with his comrades at arms, his escapades when not 'sodjerin',' and his contacts with the natives of North Africa and Italy [where the author himself served, surprise!] are recorded as he evaluates them with the earthy wisdom peculiar to his Ozark heritage." [In other words, the author fancied himself a Ring Lardner of the Ozarks. Curiously, though, the jacket blurb doesn't actually say where he hails from, and in an acknowledgement he credits Vance Randolph's book 'Down in the Holler' as a source for the Ozark dialect. So I guess he maybe wasn't a mountain boy hisself.] . Very Good in Fair dj.