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Author: Felice Swados Title: Reform School Girl Subtitle: House Of Fury Publisher:   Diversey Romance Novel Country: USA Date: 1948 Format: Paperback Genre: Fiction, Romance, Society Cat#: 01 First Published:   1941 Rating: Rate Collection:   I Own It     I Want It  Community:  1 Owns Price Guide: Valuation Page » Search eBay #AD  » Search Amazon #AD This site contains affiliate links for which we may be compensated.

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Canadian model and ice skating star Marty Collins posed for the cover shot. Her father sued the publisher for defamation and won, causing the publisher to excise the first page of text from this and all volumes.

The story deals with assorted free spirits on lockdown at a home for wayward girls. It was published by Diversey in 1948, but originally appeared in 1941 as a Doubleday hardback called House of Fury. Diversey had the genius idea to rework the cover art and ended up putting Canadian ice skater Marty Collins on the front, dressed far less demurely than in her competitive routines. Despite the look of the novel, Swados was a serious writer, which is why Reform School Girls focuses its plot on racial oppression and the dangerous decision by two of the cruelly treated black girls to bust out. There's also a nod to lesbianism, though not explicitly. Swados cooked up a classic with this incendiary debut, but her rare skills—which even scored her an editorial gig at Time magazine—were never broadly showcased due to a case of cancer that killed her in 1945 when she was only twenty-nine. Way too early for someone who drew comparisons to William Faulkner and Carson McCullers.

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