Dance Night

Like Stella Gibbons and Barbara Pym, Dawn Powell is an author whose novels are often overlooked and underappreciated. Born in Ohio in 1895, she moved to New York City in 1918 where she lived and wrote until her death. Dance Night is her third novel; I've had a copy sitting on my shelf gathering dust for almost two years. I don't know why I let it sit so long. I love the way Powell writes! And I have to say, I spent a very happy weekend immersed in the lives of young Morry and Jen and the other characters living in Lamptown, Ohio. Here's a small taste of this American classic:

"Morry leaned far out the window and looked above and below, but there was no woman in the sky nor any sign of a miracle for blocks around. Girls from the Works in light dresses wandered, giggling, up and down the street waiting for the Casino Dance Hall above Bauer's to open, farm couples stood transfixed before Robbin's Jewelry Store window, the door of Delaney's Saloon swung open, shut, open, shut, releasing then withdrawing the laughter and the gaudy music of a pianola. Everything was as it was on any other Thursday night in Lamptown."

"Suddenly he thought he had lived over stores long enough, he wanted someplace to stretch his long limbs, someplace where he belonged...Morry felt homesick for spacious houses set in spreading lawns fringed with great calm shade trees--he was homesick for things he had never known, for families he had only read about, he missed people--old friends that had lived only in the novels he had read." 

"The Chicago train thundered by with a fleeting glimpse of white-jacketed porters and lit-up dining cars. Morry and Jen watched it hungrily, they were on that train whizzing through Lamptown on their way to someplace, someplace wonderful.... The train went ripping through further silence leaving only a humming in the air and a smoky message painted on the sky.  Morry and Jen looked quickly at each other--this was the thing that always bound them--trains hunting out unknown cities, convincing proof of adventure far off, of destiny somewhere waiting of things beyond Lamptown..."

 Happy Reading!

Backlist Reader Challenge Update:  2 books read, 8 to go.

My 5 favorite Dawn Powell novels:

     The Locusts Have No King

     Dance Night

     The Wicked Pavilion

     The Happy Island

     A Time To Be Born