The Humpherys Family

Dear Enemy

Record Added: 9/1/2020
Author 
Setting United States
Topic Adult Fiction, Classics
Publisher Grosset & Dunlap Publishe
ISBN 9997519345   Year 1915
Age 13-YA
Description Gray printed binding
 
Dear Enemy is the 1915 sequel to Jean Webster's 1912 novel Daddy-Long-Legs. It was among the top 10 best sellers in the U.S. in 1916. The story is presented in a series of letters written by Sallie McBride, Judy Abbott's classmate and best friend in Daddy-Long-Legs.

Among the recipients of the letters are Judy; Jervis Pendleton, Judy's husband and the president of the orphanage where Sallie is filling in until a new superintendent can be installed; Gordon Hallock, a wealthy Congressman and Sallie's later fiancé; and the orphanage's doctor, embittered Scotsman Robin 'Sandy' MacRae (to whom Sallie addresses her letters: "Dear Enemy").

Webster employs the epistolary structure to good effect; Sallie's choices of what to recount to each of her correspondents reveal a lot about her relationships with them.