Evening in Spring

August Derleth regarded Evening in Spring (1941) as perhaps the best novel he ever wrote. The product of many years' work, the novel began as a novella written as early as 1929, under the title "The Early Years." Derleth wrote successive drafts of this text, showing some of them to his friend H. P. Lovecraft, who commented incisively upon them. Then, around 1940, he wrote the novel as we have it in a few months. This is a poignant tale of young love: Steve Grendon (an obvious stand-in for Derleth himself) becomes infatuated with Margery Estabrook, but both sets of parents object, both because of the couple's youth and also because Steve is Catholic and Margery is Protestant. Will the couple overcome these obstacles, or will they prove too much for these teenagers? Set in the rural Wisconsin landscape that the author paints with as tenderness and affection as he depicts the complex emotions of his protagaonists, Evening in Spring is a testament to the sensitivity of character portrayal that typifies August Derleth's best work.