Books: Prize Mother

In the little Jacobs house in Bay St. Louis, Miss, there was vast commotion one day last week. Telephone and doorbell buzzed like mad, neighbors flew in & out, tongues clacked incessantly. Mrs. Jacobs rang up her husband at his tollhouse on the Pontchartrain Bridge, spoke breathlessly. Stuttering with excitement, he relayed her message by long distance to his two daughters at Louisiana State University, who shrilled the great news through their dormitory. It was three days before Christmas. It was Mrs. Jacobs' 44th birthday. It was also her 22nd wedding anniversary. But none of these pleasant milestones was the cause of the Jacobs' rejoicing. What had happened was that in far-off Manhattan the judges of the Bodd, Mead-Pictorial Review 1935 novel contest had awarded their $10,000 prize to one Margaret Flint. And Margaret Flint was Mrs. Lester Warner Jacobs' maiden name.

Quickly the Jacobs family forgathered, jubilantly celebrated Christmas, birthday, anniversary, then packed their heroine off to Manhattan and glory. At her publishers' tea there Author Margaret Flint, swelling with pleased pride and a corsage of tea-roses, looked more than ever like Mrs. Jacobs of Bay St. Louis. One of her sponsors, in helpful vein, asked if she felt like a butterfly on a pin. "Rather a weighty butterfly," smiled 200-lb. Margaret Flint Jacobs. With five of her six children at home and a husband whose toll-bridge had been rendered bankrupt by Huey Long's free bridges, Author Flint let it be known she was in Manhattan for business, not pleasure. "What am I going to do with the money? Well, with five children to educate that is easy to answer. I'm going to spend it for that. No, I'm not going to buy a car." After gathering in her check and her roses she planned to pay a brief visit to Maine relatives, then head for home.

Last week's was not Author Flint's first literary prize. As a young newshen on the Old Town, Me., Enterprise, she had won a $12 prize for a piece on the operation and care of sewing machines. The article, though, was not run. After that she married a fellow-graduate of the University of Maine and went South to be a mother, cook, seamstress, smalltown housewife. But she never got over her ambition to be a writer as well. She ground out short stories. They were all rejected. In late-at-night, snatched moments over four years she slowly tapped out a novel. It was about a Maine farm, the kind of country she had grown up in. She called it The Old Ashburn Place. One of her daughters read a few pages, did not like it much. Her husband was no hand for fiction anyway, preferred the Bible. But when the book was finished, off she sent it to Pictorial Review, where it will begin to appear serially next May.