Bontemps, Arna and Conroy, Jack — Sam Patch. The High & Wide Handsome Jumper

Houghton Mifflin 39pp., biege cloth binding. Color illustrations by Paul Brown. Light wear and soiling, faint red scribbling on back cover. Inscribed to J.F. Powers by Jack Conroy "For all the Powers of/St. Cloud, Young and not-so-young, from an/old feller who never could/leap as high as Sam/and now can hardly raise/enough energy to brush/away the blue-tail fly/let along crack corn/Jack Conroy/Chicago/April 8, 1956". Powers and Conroy were friends and they had some correspondence over the years. This copy is from the library of J.F. Powers and is signed by his daugher Katherine and dated July, 1999, when she became executor of his estate. Powers won the 1963 National Book Award for his novel "Morte D'Urban" and his other novel was a finalist for the same award in 1988. Size: 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall Signed by Author(s) First Edition. Boston Good