No Bed of Roses

by Faith Baldwin

Contemporary Romance Large Print Edition Katie Palmer, a real estate agent, and her husband Jeremy, a bookstore owner, didn t always communicate. Katie liked her independence and wanted to continue working. Jeremy wanted a family. They had their share of misunderstandings and battles, and sometimes Katie wondered why she had ever married. But when Jeremy began to spend many hours with Beth Nelson over a manuscript discovery, Katie s resentment and misunderstanding sorely tested the marriage. How Faith Baldwin solves the problems of this young marriage makes for an enchanting and romantic novel.

Genres: Fiction

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1973

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]

I'm so glad that I found Faith Baldwin. Yes, she passed away in 1978, but she left behind a collection of great adult novels. This book, written towards the end of her career (1973) is as fresh and enjoyable as those she wrote in the late nineteen twenties. Part of the beauty of Ms. Baldwin's novels is that she changed with the times. She wasn't stuck with 1930's melodrama, but rather viewed love and marriage as it evolved with the times. This story revolves around a couple who married a little late in life,but not too late. We watch a couple who were set in their ways adapt to the concept of sharing and compromising. A Great Read!!

[Cricket Muse · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written during a time and in a place where the friendly town doctor made house calls and the decision to work after having a child proved a dilemma, Baldwin gives readers the story of a contemporary marriage, at least at that time.

Fast-paced dialogue with an assortment of different characters makes for quick reading.