Love Is A Surprise!

by Faith Baldwin

This story was serialized in Good Housekeeping under the title of Love Can Be a Problem.

Genres: Romance

245 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1940

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

[Bronwyn Rykiert · Rating 3 out of 5]

This story was okay, it had more than I expected from the back page preview.

David Alcott has just started working as a lawyer for Richard Talbot, who is someone he has always wanted to work with. For him so it was a coup when Richard stole him away from the law firm he had been biding his time with.

One of the first jobs he gets is to be chaperone to Letty McDonald, who Richard had been guardian for when her father died and until she reached her majority and now he was her lawyer. David and Letty got off on the wrong foot but there was an interest there from word go, though David thought she was a spoiled brat.

She goes and gets herself arrested and has to spend time in jail in a small town which turned out to be good for her – she got a good feed and lot of rest.

Richard took them out to dinner and talked them into spending more time together so that they could kiss and make up. Things ran smoothly to start with but do not keep that way as David is offered a position with as an Assistant DA which means lots of secrecy and long hours.

There is a bit of a mystery there too.

[Sophie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a charming little story about a high-society girl and the up-and-coming young man who falls for her. Theirs is not a smooth path to love, but it is an entertaining one. And although the story starts out lighthearted enough, it becomes more serious as it goes along. It's easy to tell that it was meant to be serialized in a magazine rather than sold as a complete novel, but it is no less enjoyable for that.

[Eden Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Visit JetBlackDragonfly (The Man Who Read Too Much) at www.edenthompson.ca/blog
featuring a large clean copy of the original hardcover.

Faith Baldwin was one of the most successful writers of light fiction, and one of the highest paid. Her stories about strong-willed women of the 1930's - 1950's, reflected the times and entertained. This was published as Love Can Be A Problem and Love Can Be A Surprise - which is why I didn't realize I already owned this when I found a first edition hardcover. With its thick foxed pages, it was a pleasure to read, although mixing romance with mystery was not entirely successful plot-wise.

This story is as cool and bright as the day David Alcott walked to his new job at one of Manhattan's best law firms. His boss Talbot has faith in David.
Headlines proclaim socialite Letty MacDonald "Home from England!" with photographs showing her disembark a European ocean-liner. One of New York's elite at just 22, she always shines in her expensive furs and curly black hair.
Talbot acts as trust fund advisor to wealthy children, and David will take on his client - Letty. "Nuts!" David is instantly adverse to this frivolous girl, especially when she asks for more money, her recent allowance already spent. "Someone has to buy mink coats, you know." He thinks she deserves a good spanking, but golly, she is the most attractive girl he's ever seen.

Enroute to her Connecticut home, she drives into a parked car. It's David to the rescue, but without a license she's given three days in jail! She blames David, "and if she doesn't see him until six years come next Michaelmas it will be centuries too soon."
But - there is an unexpected kiss goodbye, through the cell bars no less, and David discovers his heart yearns for her - so infinitely desirable and entirely maddening, he wants to take her in his arms and shake her, or maybe he just wants to take her in his arms.
Jail shakes her core, and she drops her Princess pretence, confessing what really happened to her allowance. She has a heart of gold, and Talbot vows to act the matchmaker for the youngsters, sending them to dine and dance at the Hawaiian Maisonette.

It's only page 133, so there is plenty of time for the two of them to fall in love, but a new hurdle twists the plot into mystery. The D.A. asks David to help in the case of an innocent man accused of smuggling drugs. Rooting out the heads of the Harlem drug underworld will take David day and night, and Letty is put aside. This is serious business, with taxi drivers fished out of the river, and people shot at close range. David also carries a gun, and the little stray cat he adopted has been killed as a warning.

This has a double plot I did not expect. The first half is like a screwball comedy by Preston Sturges, and the investigation that takes over is very somber. Although her novels are pure entertainment, there are some realistic turns that can surprise. Sometimes it's fun to read a 'boy meets girl', especially when there are nights of dancing at the Hawaiian Maisonette, where they have to sit very close and there isn't much elbow room.
The books of Faith Baldwin are easy to find, she was as prolific as Nora Roberts and continually reprinted through the decades.