Odd Girl Out

2016 Reprint of 1957 Edition.  Full facsimile of the original edition, not reproduced with Optical Recognition Software.  Bannon is one of only a very few women who have written about being lesbian during the 1950s and 1960s.  Her novels, all issued as paperbacks with ongoing characters, reflect the repressiveness of those decades and reveal how much needed to change.  Bannon presents all the constraints that gays endured in the 1950’s; the fear of sharing one’s personal life one’s coworkers, friends or even family because if could mean losing everything; and if the police were called, there was always the risk of jail.  Laura Landon is a sheltered freshman at a fictional university in a Midwestern town. Intensely shy and introverted, she is drawn to the president of the Student Union, Beth Cullison. Beth is outgoing and friendly, experienced socially (with men, particularly) but feels a void in her life. She doesn't understand how the other girls are so fulfilled by the men in their lives, despite having tried. Every time she allows herself to be intimate with one, she breaks it off out of disappointment.