# Jessamyn West (writer)

Mary Jessamyn West (July 18, 1902 – February 23, 1984) was an American author of short stories and novels, notably The Friendly Persuasion (1945). A Quaker from Indiana, she graduated from Fullerton Union High School in 1919 and Whittier College in 1923. There she helped found the Palmer Society in 1921. She received an honorary Doctor of Letters (Litt.D) degree from Whittier College in 1946. She received the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize in 1975.

## Personal life

West was born in Vernon, Indiana, to Eldo Roy West and Grace Anna Milhous. She was a second cousin of Richard Nixon through her mother's father. Her family left Indiana for California when she was six. They stayed for a time on an orange ranch (which she wrote about later in Cress Delahanty) before settling in nearby Yorba Linda. Her siblings included two brothers and a sister: Merle, Myron, and Carmen. Growing up in the West Home in the same rural Yorba Linda region as Nixon, Jessamyn attended a Sunday school class taught by Nixon's father, Frank, whom she characterized as "a fiery persuasive teacher." She subsequently commented that Frank Nixon's version of the social gospel inclined her politically toward socialism.
In 1923, West married Harry Maxwell McPherson. They moved to Hemet, California where she worked for four years as a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse. In 1929, she studied at Oxford University during a summer session before returning to the U.S. for graduate work at the University of California, Berkeley. While preparing to complete her doctorate degree, she was stricken with tuberculosis. In August 1932, she entered La Viña Sanatorium near Pasadena. Her chances of recovery were not considered good. At one point, the doctors said she should be taken home to die (an experience she would describe in The Woman Said Yes). However, she did finally recover, and in 1934 she rejoined her husband who was teaching in Mt. Shasta, California. In 1940, they moved to Napa when her husband obtained a job as a high school principal. She remained in Napa until her death.

## Work

In 1939, West published her first literary work, a short story called "99.6". It was a fictionalized account of her stay in the sanatorium. She then began selling more short stories to small literary magazines. Her first published novel concerned a family of Quakers living in Indiana, despite the fact that she grew up and lived her adult life in California. Asked about this in an interview, she said, "I write about Indiana because knowing little about it, I can create it." Comparing herself to other authors who created fictional universes, she remarked:
   "Roth wrote The Breast. Would you ask him how he could do this since he had never been a breast? Adams wrote Watership Down. Would you ask him how he could do this since he admitted his rabbit knowledge came from a book about rabbits? ... And those hobbits!... I am a bigger risk-taker than these others. The Hoosiers can contradict me. No rabbit, hobbit, or breast has been known to speak up in reply to their exploiters."
Her Quaker stories, although shaped by her imagination, are loosely based on tales she heard from her mother and grandmother about their life in rural Indiana. The Birdwell family, depicted in her books The Friendly Persuasion and Except for Me and Thee, are derived from Joshua and Elizabeth Milhous, the great-grandparents she shared with Richard Nixon.

### The Friendly Persuasion

The Friendly Persuasion (1945) is West's best-known work. The New York Times book reviewer Orville Prescott called it "as fresh and engaging, tender and touching a book as ever was called sentimental by callous wretches... There have been plenty of louder and more insistent books this year, but few as sure and mellow as The Friendly Persuasion."
The novel was adapted into the 1956 movie Friendly Persuasion, starring Gary Cooper and directed by William Wyler. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. West's memoir To See the Dream recounts her experiences as one of the writers tasked with revising Michael Wilson's early screenplay adaptation, which had been commissioned by director Frank Capra in the late 1940s.
Except for Me and Thee, her 1969 sequel to The Friendly Persuasion, was adapted into a 1975 television movie, titled Friendly Persuasion, starring Richard Kiley.

### Cress Delahanty

Cress Delahanty (1953) is a collection of vignettes about a sensitive and artistic teenage girl, Crescent "Cress" Delahanty, growing up in rural Orange County, California in the pre-World War II period. Some of the book's chapters were previously published in slightly different form in The New Yorker, Woman's Day and Ladies' Home Journal. Cress Delahanty was a Book of the Month Club selection for January 1954. Los Angeles Times book reviewer Milton Merlin called it "a richly rewarding story of five mysterious, unpredictable and adventurous years in a girl's life on a Southern California ranch.... Jessamyn West never reaches out for spectacular incidents. She doesn't have to, for growing up has enough excitement, amusement and heartbreak in itself for any novel. This is one that you'll remember and that will make you remember."