Spindrift

by Jesse L. Lasky Jr.

This is a novel about a combat photographer, a girl in Sydney, another girl in New York, and the combat photographer’s wife in San Francisco—a shifting pattern of intense relationships that steadies down to the resumption of the marriage of Captain Dan Reed, combat photographer, and Nancy Reed. But Dan and Nancy almost become domestic casualties of World War II, almost join the “spindrift generation.” In a larger sense, Jesse L. Lasky, Jr., has written a novel about “spindrift people,” the hordes of young Americans cut loose from their pre-war who are unable to solve their problems in a post-war world.

A practiced hand at fiction, Jesse L. Lasky, Jr., maintains a quick pace from Dan’s flying away from the war in Hollandia to Nancy’s perception in an art gallery in New York of what her husband had been through—and couldn’t talk about. The dialogue crackles, and the hellraising streak in many of the characters—the resort to quick love and alcohol—makes for anything but dull reading. And the theme of the novel gives rise to the question: is there a new “lost generation” in the making?

This is not a war novel but a novel about the aftermath of the storm of war—a novel about “spindrift young men and their girls”—a story of emotions that have become dislocated, of hopes that have been smashed, of purposes that have been stolen. It is told without despair or moralizing, and Dan and Nancy groping towards each other will catch the reader’s sympathy.

232 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Jesse L. Lasky, Jr. (September 19, 1910—April 11, 1988) was an American screenwriter, novelist, playwright and poet.

Lasky wrote eight novels, five plays, three books of poetry and more than 50 screenplays.