A Wreath for the Enemy

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First published in 1954, A Wreath for the Enemy is the compelling story of a precocious fourteen-year-old girl and the nineteen-year-old woman she becomes. The events of one late night transform what appears at first to be a typical adolescent crisis, launching Penelope Wells and her counterpart Don Bradley into separate, prolonged struggles for self-definition. Their coming-of-age entails not only physical and emotional dimensions, but a spiritual one as well. Frankau, who wrote some thirty novels before her death in 1966, clearly meant this one to be a psychological autobiography; young Penelope is destined to be a writer from the opening page. But most remarkable is the insightful and sharp quality of her prose

Paperback, jacketed, 320 pages, 5.5 x 8.5", 1991, 0-914232-84-3
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  • Reviews
  • The Author
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"A Wreath for the Enemy . . . will remind older readers of challenges like Katherine Anne Porter's Pale Horse, Pale Rider and will provoke nearly all others." — Small Press: The Magazine of Independent Publishing

"For its presentation of an uncommonly strong-willed and charming young woman, this novel deserves comparison with such classics as Franny and Zooey and A High Wind in Jamaica." — Feminist Bookstore News
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"The characters are exquisitely developed." — Library Journal
Pamela Sydney Frankau (3 January 1908 – 8 June 1967) was a popular English novelist. Descended from an artistic and literary family, although abandoned by her novelist father, Gilbert Frankau, at an early age, she became a prolific writer in her early years. She stopped writing for a decade after the death of her lover, Humbert Wolfe, in 1940. After serving her country in World War II, she was married for several years to an American naval officer. In the late 1940s, she returned to England and resumed her writing career with even more success than before. Frankau published her most successful novel, The Willow Cabin in 1949, which was based partly on the experience of her love for Wolfe, and her following novels were widely read. First published in 1954, A Wreath for the Enemy is perhaps her most enduring novel and is still in print on both sides of the Atlantic. In the novel the events of one night transform what appears at first to be a typical adolescent crisis into a prolonged struggle for self-definition on the part of the novel's teenage protagonist. In part autobiographical, Frankau clearly identified with her lead character who is presented as a writer in development. — Wikipedia