Alva Review-Courier -

Like many aspiring fiction writers, Erskine Caldwell had a difficult time breaking into the profession. Magazine editors consistently rejected his short stories, and he had to pay to have his first two novels published.

Finally, a French magazine accepted one of his stories so long as the publisher did not have to pay him. Caldwell gladly agreed and celebrated this small victory.

By 1930 Caldwell was submitting his short stories to Scribner’s Magazine, an important American journal that was a subsidiary of a book publishing company. The fiction editor for both stories and novels was a man name...