Leane Zugsmith: Thunder on the Left

Leane Zugsmith was one of the most talented and acclaimed writers of fiction during the 1930s decade. She published six novels, a collection of stories, and her work was widely printed in the most popular magazines of the time. An early and ardent feminist, she brought compassion and insight to the personal and social problems facing women, particularly urban women, during that turbulent period. Her writing was praised by one reviewer then as a work "which cuts with acid strength into the problems of American freedom." Her 1938 novel, The Summer Soldier, based on struggles in the South, was reviewed as a work "challenging and profound, with drive and precision and with language as modern as the plot."