Casual Affairs

<p><b>Follows the life and career of Sally Benson, acclaimed writer of</b><b><i> New Yorker </i></b><b>fiction and Hollywood screenplays.</b></p><p>In <i>Casual Affairs</i>, Maryellen V. Keefe vividly follows the life and career of Sally Benson, the <i>New Yorker</i> writer remembered by generations of moviegoers for <i>Meet Me in St. Louis</i>, the film that brought her family to life. Keefe traces Benson's life from her childhood in St. Louis to marriage and motherhood to her award-winning fiction career and her success as a Hollywood screenwriter. Through the Jazz Age and into the 1930s and '40s, Benson negotiated the transition from domesticity to the marketplace, becoming a full-fledged career woman while juggling her responsibilities as a wife and mother and indulging in several "quiet little affairs." She succeeded early in a profession dominated by men, forging her way in a largely male world and winning the support and friendship of colleagues and editors. Benson established herself as a writer known for brutally honest portraits of middle-class women much like herself.</p>