Foreword
In our two-faced, double-standard world of sexual and social phony-boloney, there are no sharper turns or steeper slides than incest or pedophilia. We are too dishonest to admit sexual love for our kin, especially the very young. In older societies-and who can say they are not wiser for their age?-sex is a more practical matter.
As a matter-of-fact, according to studies carried on over the past fifty years, the same "abandoned" practices which our social order decries in India, China, and black civilizations are to be found in our own communities. Carolyn Hunt, who regularly contributes a genuinely exciting atmosphere in her adult novels, says, in effect, it may be just down the block from you.
In this stimulating tale, warmed by the California sun she knows so well, Ms. Hunt's heroine is a courageous young girl whose only desire is to help her brother. Loving is giving, according to the ancient adage, and little Eva James, with a "baby brother" unusually advanced physically for his age, gives him all she has.
It is a plenty. In fact, her lonely and frustrated father, unable to find his way back to his old-time sexual boldness, is not above needing her "help", too.
As in all such relationships, it is a matter of give as well as take, and her father joins her brother in pouring their love and affection into their family arrangement. There is a touching and heart-warming generosity in the way she gives to her men-folk, and in the generosity with which they give it to her.
"I like to base my novels on situations that are as real as life itself," Ms. Hunt writes us. "A boy reaching puberty too soon, grasping blindly for what will help him to find his goal, is only too frequently shunted aside from his true need ..When he is lucky enough to have a loving sister, he finds there is a better way of beating whatever rises in his path to cause him worry and discomfort."
In this same vein, the author also warmly accepts the fact that a father, bottling up his normal passions, can find no love more tender or more sincere than the love that exists within his own family. And her young heroine, who is willing to give until it hurts, finds to her great joy that it doesn't.
"I don't consider the old-fashioned 'happy ending' to be corny, trite, or unbelievable," Carolyn concludes her cover letter. "No love brings more good feelings than family love, and it is a love that lasts and lasts and lasts. Marriages may dissolve in divorce, but brother-sister-father love go on forever."
New from Surrey House, Ind., you will find four fresh, new Bedside Books, along with their all-time bestselling companions, Rated-X and Surrey Collectors Series. Serious collectors will want each and every one, side-by-side on their special, private bookshelves, handy for several pleasure-filled readings.
Bedside Books, like all Surrey House, Inc. books, are designed with YOU in mind, and every attempt to reflect your desires and reading tastes is made. Readers' comments are invited at all times, and we urge you to write us, at all times, with exact details of what you like to read, or with any other sexual matters you wish to impart, IN ABSOLUTE, STRICTEST CONFIDENCE. You need not identify yourself if you wish not to, but only through communication with YOU can we give YOU what YOU want.
All especially significant letters will be answered immediately, and all story suggestions are passed on to our capable staff of writers all over the world.
-THE PUBLISHERS Santee, California August, 1975