SAM'S SONG.

New York:: Coward-McCann,, (1969). Hardcover first edition -. Very good+ in a very good minus dust jacket (some shelfwear to bottom edge of boards, toning to spine of dj, a few small chips, original price of 4.95 still present.. First printing. The author's very hard to define second novel. At the time this was written, Schoonover was - like her protagonist - a mother of three, living in Nebraska, in the process of a divorce, but other than understanding the bitterness and hurt, this is not autobiographical. The website Neglected Books comments: "When the novel came out in paperback in early 1970s, the Chicago Tribunes book editor observed cynically, 'It is one of the most revealing books ever written about a woman. Which is probably why the hardcover edition vanished without a trace.' If anyone picked up 'Sams Song' in search of a thrill, they were bound to be disappointed. Sam is certainly profane, but its not pornographic. Sam does not 'discover' herself through her sexual liberation. Sex is more like booze, a source of temporary relief from pain. Sams Song is more a four-letter-word rap than symphony: Sams profanity is visceral, a sign of the pain, anger, and unrest always simmering, always on the brink of boiling over. It may be the rawest book written by a woman in the 1960s." A book which poses, but does not answer, the question "What is a woman?" 190 pp. Dust jacket art by Bob Ziering.