Gladys Hasty Carroll, who had previously published short stories and two books for children and adolescents (Cockatoo, 1929; Land Spell, 1930), gained fame with her first three novels for adults, As the Earth Turns (1933), A Few Foolish Ones (1935), and Neighbor to the Sky (1937). Each of these adult novels, as well as Land Spell, portrays a large family in rural Maine. Although Carroll has continued to write prolifically, these three remain her best novels. As the Earth Turns, a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and a remarkable best-seller, was translated into sixty languages and dialects, selected for inclusion in the White House Library of American books, and published in a special large-type edition as a Keith Jennison classic. It appeared in March 1933, at the depths of the Depression, in the month of Franklin Delano Roosevelt's inauguration and his proclamation of a four-day nationwide bank closing. Carroll remarked that her parents had "put their...