Jessamyn West

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West, Jessamyn (1907–84), Indiana‐born au‐thor, graduate of Whittier College, had long resi‐dence in California. Her first work, The Friendly Persuasion (1945), gives a sense of her heritage through its tender, fictive sketches of mid‐19th‐century Quaker life in Indiana. Her next work, The Witch Diggers (1951), also set in her native state, is a symbolic novel about life on a poor farm in the 1890s and of the experiences of the superintendent's family and some inmates who dig for Truth. Other fiction includes Cress Delahanty (1953), charming sketches of the life of an adolescent California girl on a ranch and in town. South of the Angels (1960) is a large and panoramic novel about settlers on a vast real‐estate development near Los Angeles at the opening of the 20th century; A Matter of Time (1966) is a semi‐autobiographical tale of a woman attending to her “young‐middle‐aged” sister dying of cancer; Leafy Rivers (1967), set on the 19th‐century Ohio frontier, is a story of a young woman growing to maturity during the early years of her marriage; Except for Me and Thee (1969) is in spirit and subject a companion piece to The Friendly Persuasion; The Massacre at Fall Creek (1975), also set on the Indiana frontier, is a depiction of the trial of whites who murdered Indians; and The Life I Really Lived (1979) is about the complex loving relations and affairs of a Midwestern woman transplanted to California. Stories are collected in Love, Death, and the Ladies' Drill Team (1959) and Crimson Ramblers of the World, Farewell (1970). Love Is Not What You Think (1959) is an essay; To See the Dream (1957) treats her experiences with the filming of her first book; and A Mirror for the Sky (1948) is a libretto for an opera about Audubon. Autobiographies are Hide and Seek (1973), from childhood to young womanhood; and The Woman Said Yes (1976), about her own sickness, tuberculosis, and the sickness and suicide of her sister that she had fictionalized in A Matter of Time. The Secret Look (1974) collects poems. Double Discovery (1980) prints her European travel diary of 1929.

Jessamyn West 1907–84, American novelist, b. Indiana. A Quaker herself, her most famous novel is The Friendly Persuasion (1945), about the conflicts felt by a Quaker farm family during the Civil War. Other works include the novels Cress Delahanty (1954) and Except for Me and Thee (1969), a sequel to The Friendly Persuasion ; collections of stories including Love, Death, and the Ladies Drill Team (1955), and Collected Stories (1987); and the autobiographical Hide and Seek (1973) and The Woman Said Yes (1976).