SOURCE: Krishner, Trudy. “The Goal of a Lifetime Won at Last.” Christian Science Monitor (27 January 1984): 19.

In the following review, Krishner gives a preview of “… And Ladies of the Club,” noting its fortunate selection by the Book-of-the-Month Club and G. P. Putnam's Sons.

For Helen Santmyer, success has come somewhat later than it does in most careers. Miss Santmyer, an 88-year-old retired librarian, is being hailed as the literary equivalent of Grandma Moses.

Her novel about small-town life, which she began in the 1920s and finally finished as a nursing home resident in the 1980s, has been published by a university press and is about to be republished in large, lucrative editions by the Book-of-the-Month Club and G. P. Putnam's Sons.

Suddenly Helen Hooven Santmyer is a literary celebrity. Reporters and photographers invade her nursing home accommodations in this quiet southwestern Ohio town. And, as the headlines indicate, the...