When the Atlantic Monthly held its first prize novel contest 23 years ago, a flood of 1,150 manuscripts engulfed the editorial staff; extra readers were hired to weed out the hopeless entries. Into the rejects went a manuscript titled Jalna, written by a Canadian woman named Mazo de la Roche. Its handsome binding caught the eye of one of the Atlantic's regular editors. He picked the manuscript out of the discard, glanced at it and did not stop reading until he had finished it. Jalna won the contest's $10,000 first prize.
Last week, Author de la Roche and the saga of...
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