By Joan Sargent
(pseud. Sara Jenkins Cunningham), ©1963
(pseud. Sara Jenkins Cunningham), ©1963
To Roxanne Collier,
Dr. Vance Collier had become a shadow-husband keeping up the façade of an empty
marriage, so when Dr. Fritz Bascomb showed her that she was still a beautiful,
desirable woman, she was grateful and flattered. Then tragedy struck in the
form of an epidemic that threatened the lives of the town’s children. It was a
time for some quick and deep soul-searching, for Vance and Roxanne faced not
only the break-up of their marriage but the loss of their child.
GRADE: B+
BEST QUOTES:
“What’s he doing to Pomeroy that the rest of us wouldn’t if we got the chance?”
“What’s he doing to Pomeroy that the rest of us wouldn’t if we got the chance?”
“He’s going to get better. He assures me that he won’t stay
in such a place as this and that he hates me. You can’t down a man like that.”
“Miss Skipper, completely won over, was quite willing to try
anything that went with that smile.”
“How do you like being an incurable disease, Beautiful?”
REVIEW:
I’ve been on a roll lately, finding myself in some of the
more interesting VNRNs I’ve met to date. My
Love an Altar continues in this vein: The main characters are a decade
older than most, are already married (even if only to each other), and are attracted to
other people. Roxanne Collier is the perfect doctor’s wife, beautiful, stylish,
a brilliant hostess—and she hates every minute of it. On the inside she is
insecure, lonely, and contemplating a major change in life. Her husband, chief
of staff Vince Collier, admittedly married young Roxanne for her money, and has
built a successful career as the head of a major sanatorium for tuberculosis
treatment. He’s not happy, either, however, because he is overwhelmingly guilt-ridden, feeling he has been handed everything on a silver platter belonging to
his father-in-law, who has funded Vince’s education and the hospital itself.
Then, at a dinner party during which Roxanne is suffering a
major migraine, she is seated next to psychiatrist Fritz Bascomb, who
recognizes Roxanne’s ailment as springing from the deep-seated dissatisfaction in her
life. He rescues her from the party, takes her home, gives her medication, and
days later is taking her out for pie at the truck stop on the edge of town. He’s an
incorrigible flirt and knows how to use his powers, and soon his attentions
perk up the wilting Roxanne, giving her a confidence she had lacked when she
felt overlooked and unappreciated. She secretly begins taking classes at the
local university and plots a trip to Reno when the couple’s daughter, Susan,
goes off to college next year.
Vance, meanwhile, has an office nurse, Mary Pendleton, who
has long been in love with the doctor and with whom he shares a not entirely
professional relationship. Nothing untoward happens, of course, but his
demeanor toward her is more possessive and involved than it should be. After several
years of this, Mary has decided she needs to put an end to the chaste affair and submits her
resignation. Vance has a better idea, however, and offers her a post working
for the new doctor in town, Tom Hazard. Soon Mary is looking at Tom with the
same adoring eyes she once cast on Vance, and for some inexplicable reason
Vance despises young Tom and his new-fangled ways of treating
tuberculosis.
The climax of the book comes when Vance’s daughter—along with
a good number of other children in town—becomes desperately ill with a
tuberculosis-like disease that no one can diagnose, and it’s all hands on deck
to save her life. The ending is exactly what you know it will be—even the
mystery epidemic is foretold in the book’s opening chapter (and this is by no
means a spoiler). We couldn’t actually have a VNRN solve its romantic dilemmas
with divorce, but this book is unique in that it gives us characters who are preparing
to take that ignoble route. The writing is quietly more than competent and
honestly sincere, and I must confess I even shed a tear at one point. Though it
lacks the camp I hope for in a VNRN, we do, however, have some sass in the
Collier’s daughter, Susan, who is full of quips like, “I know the book says an
adolescent gets a crush on a man much older, but don’t worry about me and Dr.
Bascomb. I’m thinking of having my crush on Mr. Bates, who teaches physics at
school. He’s more my type. Sort of plain and helpless.” If its ending is not as
revolutionary as it hints it could be, this book has a lot more to offer than most of the herd.