Herbst, Josephine (Frey)

Herbst, Josephine [Frey] (1892–1969), Iowaborn proletarian author, graduated from the University of California (1918). Her major fiction is a trilogy about an American family, the Trexlers: Pity Is Not Enough (1933) tells of a son who loses health, wealth, and faith during the Gilded Age; The Executioner Waits (1934) shows the family during the years 1918 to 1929, typifying the era's social conflicts and personal frustrations; and Rope of Gold (1939) follows the younger Trexlers through the economic chaos of the 1930s. Other novels include Nothing Is Sacred (1928), Money for Love (1929), Satan's Sergeants (1941), and Somewhere the Tempest Fell (1947). The Unknown Americas (1939) is a social study of Latin America; New Green World (1954) depicts John Bartram and other early American naturalists. The Starched Blue Sky of Spain (1991) contains, in the title memoir, an account of her time as a journalist based in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War, and of her friendship with Hemingway, Dos Passos, and others. In the same book she tells of an Iowa childhood in Sioux City and of youthful friendship with Katherine Anne Porter, Ford Madox Ford, and Allen Tate, among others, during Greenwich Village days in New York.