The Lonely Man

by Faith Baldwin

Dr. Jonathan Condit, a physician with a demanding practice in a small New England town continues to morn the loss of his young wife until beautiful, rich, and divorced Frances Lawson returns to town

320 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1975

About the author

Faith Baldwin attended private academies and finishing schools, and in 1914-16 she lived in Dresden, Germany. She married Hugh H. Cuthrell in 1920, and the next year she published her first novel, Mavis of Green Hill. Although she often claimed she did not care for authorship, her steady stream of books belies that claim; over the next 56 years she published more than 85 books, more than 60 of them novels with such titles as Those Difficult Years (1925), The Office Wife (1930), Babs and Mary Lou (1931), District Nurse (1932), Manhattan Nights (1937), and He Married a Doctor (1944). Her last completed novel, Adam's Eden, appeared in 1977.

Typically, a Faith Baldwin book presents a highly simplified version of life among the wealthy. No matter what the difficulties, honour and goodness triumph, and hero and heroine are united. Evil, depravity, poverty, and sex found no place in her work, which she explicitly intended for the housewife and the working girl. The popularity of her writing was enormous. In 1936, in the midst of the Great Depression, she published five novels in magazine serial form and three earlier serials in volume form and saw four of her works made into motion pictures, for an income that year in excess of $315,000. She also wrote innumerable stories, articles, and newspaper columns, no less ephemeral than the novels.

Reviews

[Ceejay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This 1964 novel by Faith Baldwin is another great read. As always, in her later novels, she has written a novel about the relationships between adults. This time we follow the life of a small town doctor, Jonathan Condit. He never remarried after losing his wife to an unexpected accident. His sister helps him run his practice.We follow the lives of his various patients. We find out why he is The Lonely Man.And in the end, we find out if he will ever find somebody with whom to share his life. Faith Baldwin's books remind me of the contemporary novels by Joanna Trollope.

[Brenda · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, this is my second Faith Baldwin novel ... and will be the last I read. As with the previous Faith Baldwin novel I finished this week, this one was also ... boring.