Foreword
Once more the pen of well known authoress Sandra Lawson has detailed a glowing account of life in a typical small town in the USA. Hubby's Little Brother is a stormy story of people we have all met or at least observed from a distance. Here we are given a chance to look inside their lives and to suffer their triumphs and defeats with them. Sharon and Gordon Edwards have, through no real fault of their own, succumbed to the pitfalls of the errors of their parents before them. Really, it can be said that their brief marriage had no chance at all from the start.
Miss Lawson shows us how dangerous the misconceptions of "the good life" can be. Sharon has been brought up to look for her Prince Charming, never realizing that she will remain the same insecure person she always was once she does meet him, and never once thinking that his arrival will bring her anything but bliss. She might have done better than to choose the laconic young newspaperman, Gordon Edwards, for her husband, for he himself was never exposed to a beneficial view of married life, having fled his parents at an early age, much the same as his young brother Guy does.
There is, however, a great difference between Gordon and his younger brother, Guy. And this difference, marked by the years between them has not only to do with inherent character, but with the period of time in which each came to manhood. Guy's generation, searching desperately for the values beyond those of their elders, has a somewhat better chance despite the combined pitfalls and glories of drugs. It is Sharon who eventually comes to realize this essential difference, shedding her old skin for the new coating of jeans and sweatshirts of the youngsters she once frowned upon. Along with this liberation comes a recognition of the joys of womanhood which heretofore had escaped her completely.
Miss Lawson has created living characters who will long haunt the reader's memory, and we are grateful to her for this revealing and timely manuscript.
-The Publishers Sausalito, California June, 1972