PATIENCE & SARAH by Isabel MILLER (Alma Routsong) ~ 1st printing McGraw store Hill 1972 ~ hardcover lesbian themes novel .. vintage ~ rare

Patience And Sarah
By MILLER, Isabel (Pseudonym Of Alma Routsong)
McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York, 1972. First McGraw Hill Edition 1972 (stated) First edition thus (previously self-published by Routsong under the title A Place for Us). Cloth hardcover very good in dustjacket with scuffing and general wear; tiny numeral ? lower front flap; else good fully intact with price present front flap). Design by Stephanie Tevonian.

" Patience and Sarah is a 1969 historical fiction novel with strong lesbian themes by Alma Routsong, using the pen name Isabel Miller. It was originally self-published under the title A Place For Us and eventually found a publisher as Patience and Sarah in 1971

Routsong's novel is based on a real-life painter named Mary Ann Willson who lived with her companion Miss Brundage as a "farmerette" in the early 19th century in Greene County, New York. Routsong said she came upon Willson's work in a folk art museum in Cooperstown and was inspired to write the story after reading the description of Willson and BrundageIt tells the story of two women in Connecticut in 1816 who fall in love and decide to leave store their homes to buy a farm in another state or territory and live in a Boston marriage. The story addresses the limited opportunities and roles of women in early America, gender expression, and the interpretation of religion in everyday life.

Sarah Waters, author of Tipping the Velvet and other historical novels with lesbian themes,has said that this book was an influence on her writing. She received the book from a girlfriend in 1988 at age 22 and was "struck by the lyricism and economy of it, by its gentle humour, and by its sexiness."