Call to Battle

New York: Doubleday, Doran & Company, 1943. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good+/Good+. Stated First Edition. Turquoise cloth boards with dark green lettering on spine. Previous owner's name rubber stamped on endpapers, else interior is clean. Dust jacket shows light edge wear; a few small spots of damage on spine; rear panel rubbed (rear panel advertises " Buy War Bonds"); price clipped. DJ in archival sleeve. 304 pp. 8 x 5.5 inches. A World War II novel of American minutemen dealing with a Japanese invasion of the Pacific Northwest. Published in January 1943. During the time this was written, fears of an imminent Japanese invasion loomed large. There were attacks on the West Coast, including the shelling of Fort Stevens, on Oregon's coast, by a Japanese submarine in June 1942, and an aerial bombing on the southern Oregon coast in September. Roderick Allyn Lull (1907-1966) was a writer and longtime resident of Portland, Oregon. He was primarily a short story writer who had contributed to several national magazines, including the Atlantic Monthly, Collier's, and the Saturday Evening Post. In 1940, he won the second place for the O. Henry Memorial Award Prize. Call to Battle was published in January 1943 and in July he was commissioned a Second Lieutenant in the Army.