SOURCE: "Edna Ferber and Her America," in The New York Times Book Review, February 5, 1939, pp. 1, 30.

In the following review of A Peculiar Treasure, Woods favorably assesses Ferber's first autobiography.

It was a lovable country town in Wisconsin, in the early years of the century: tree-shaded, prosperous, civilized, and stimulating as such a town is bound to be if one has the keenness and imagination really to look at it. "Just to sit on the front porch and watch the town go by is something of an education" in an open-living American community like this. And the formal education of the remarkably progressive high school offered extracurricular attractions as well: plays, debates, dances, the weekly "forum" with its sociability that was so urgently important to its participants. At 14 one sang in one's church choir. But almost every one of the girls had a beau in the male choir at...