Nothing Ever Breaks Except the Heart by Kay Boyle. 1966 Doubleday, first edition, 357 pages.  Boyle was an antiwar activist and prolific short-story writer, who wrote alongside the modernists and expats of her time. She won the Guggenheim and two O'Henry awards, and was widely published in the New Yorker, although was fired from her staff position and blacklisted for a time during the red scare. As for her writing, in the New York Times obituary: "The writer Stephen Vincent Benet once described Miss Boyle's style as being 'as bright as an icicle and light as the bones of a bird.' And the critic Louis Kronenberger once contended that the fineness of her insights was 'such as no other writer of our time, in English at least, can match.'"

Condition: Jacket in good condition, open tear on front cover, jacket clipped, book in good condition, owner name on end paper

"I am writing this in the hope that the young woman who told me her name was Mrs. Daisy Miller will read it and tell me why she never brought my two dollars back."