NY: Farrar, Straus and Company, 1948. First edition. 262pp. Gray cloth; dust jacket. Near fine, with light shelfwear at spine ends and tips, mild toning to textblock. Unclipped ("$2.75") jacket good only, with one larger chip affecting top of front panel and spine (where only the "Sm" of Smith's name remains), and numerous small, shallow chips and edge-tears. No fading to spine panel. Debut novel by the expatriate American journalist and writer, written at the age of twenty while Smith was serving as an Army typist in occupied Berlin. The plot centers on the romance between a Black American solider and a white German woman, and explores the paradox that a member of the segregated Army might finally be accepted as an equal in a country responsible for the most heinous racial genocide of the century. A significant social protest novel, and arguably the first to examine the racism then rampant in the American Army.
