![]() Usual, perhaps, for Mary Roberts Rinehart, if not for everyone of that generation. When Marcia’s mother died, she left behind a house in New York, the summer place, and a modest trust fund-“the usual assets of her generation.” Things were a little different for that clan than for most of us. The family fortune may have been largely gone, but the servants remained, though only four were still employed, down from the ten who had looked after the family in its halcyon days. The slow, easy days are devoted to swimming, reading, horseback riding, golf, walks, boating-the activities varying mainly according to the season. ![]() The family had lived in the sprawling, ten-bedroom house for generations but the Great Depression had wiped out much of its wealth, so its only full-time occupant was the lovely, twenty-nine-year-old woman who owned half with her brother, who had moved away. ![]() ![]() The story takes place in a large seaside house in a New England town that is a summertime destination for the well to-do, if not the rich, who flocked to Newport, Rhode Island, in those days. If ever a novel could evoke a simpler, gentler time, it is Mary Roberts Rinehart’s The Wall, written at the peak of her powers and success in 1938. ![]()
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