SOLVED. Literary fiction set after WWII and before 1955. About a G.I. and his wife. He's going to college on the G.I. Bill. [s]

[Ann aka Iftcan]

This was set after WWII and the 2 mc's are a former G.I. and his new wife. They have moved to a small college town so that the husband can go to college and get them a better life than they would have had before the War. They end up renting the attic of an older and soon to retire professor. The wife is actually the one that the story mainly follows. She's bubbly and friendly to everyone and helps the professor realize that he can have a good, fulfilling life after his retirement. Because there are a lot of other men attending the college on the G. I. bill, there are a lot of married couples. The wives feel insecure because their husbands are improving themselves and the wives are worried that they will be divorced because they are no longer "good enough" for the men. The older professor and some of the other older professors start classes for the wives to attend, and discover that the women make much better students than the men do. There is also a very minor character in the book who is a white woman who is living with a First Family man and who has had children with him. She feels that "living in sin" with the man causes less problems than if she had married him. (I mostly remember this because my family has Choctaw blood and I didn't understand what the problem was with her marrying him. Especially since this was in the MUCH more puritanical 40's and 50's, when the whole unmarried and living together thing would have been a major problem.)

I read this book as a kid, and I really think it was probably over my understanding ability, since it was a book aimed at adults. The book would definitely have been written no later than 1963 or so, because I had thought it was in a Reader's Digest Condensed Book. However, I've been through their listings and can't find anything that matches.

My parents were both readers, and the house always had stacks of books everywhere, and this was one of their books, as opposed to one of the kids books that we also had. I think I was about 10 when I read this, and, as I noted above, didn't understand some of the things that I was reading. I would have read this definitely no later than 1967, as that was when my Dad got orders to Greece, and I turned my reading eye onto books of myths and fables and with accurate (as then known) historical adventures set in Rome, Greece, Egypt, South America, the British Isles, where the MC would be Celtic or Saxon or one of the other peoples from that time period. That was also about the age that I really got introduced to sci-fi and high fantasy, and stopped being interested in the books that my parents read, as I viewed their reading tastes after this as "bland and boring." Dad read westerns and thrillers (always written by men--or if by a woman, one who was using a male pen name) and Mum read mostly romances--historical and contemporary.

[Sue]

'Joyin the Morning' by Betty Smith?https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

[Ann aka Iftcan]

I don't know if that's it. I don't think so, because I thought mine was set after WWII and the passing of the GI Bill. But I've ordered a copy and when it gets here I'll read it and see.

[Ann aka Iftcan]

Well, some of what I remembered happened in this book. But only some. So I'm thinking I must have conflated 2 books. So I'm going to move this down to Solved.