H A Keller

Yesterday's Sin   reprinted as:   Her Day of Sin

First published as Yesterday's Sin by The Macaulay Company, New York, 1934. Reprinted in paperback by Knickerbocker Publications, New York, as Her Day of Sin

H A Keller seems to have produced a handful of novels in the 1930s and 40s, none of which attracted either critical acclaim or significant sales. I have been unable to discover anything about him besides the titles of those few books which survive in the online inventories of secondhand booksellers. As well as Yesterday's Sin, there are a couple of detective thrillers and an earlier novel The Sacred Sin, dealing with the consequences of surrogate motherhood (I kid you not). Presumably, Yesterday's Sin didn't sell well enough, so the paperback came out with a racier title and a decidedly non-naturist cover.

Yesterday's Sin tells of a few short weeks in the life of an extremely wealthy 17-year-old New Yorker, Sandra Hopkins. Brought up from birth to the "free life" of nudism, Sandra spends her summers at Wild Acres. Originally this hundred-acre site had been intended as an exclusive development of country retreats for the rich, but the Depression triggered a change. The properties and a part of the site remain textile, but most of the area is a nudist colony, out-of-bounds to visitors. Wild Acres is astonishingly well-provided with opportunities for leisure, containing woods, a lake, fields, formal gardens, a school, tropical greenhouses, a speedway, stables, bridle paths and gallops - plus the gigantic central mansion where "the billiard room alone would allow forty couples to dance comfortably". But money doesn't buy immortality, and Sandra's life is turned upside down when her parents are killed in a car crash. Fortunately, Sandra's guardian is kindly 'Uncle' Ernest Holden. He whisks Sandra off to New York, where she can be properly schooled in the airs and graces expected of a "sub-deb", so that she can "come out" in due course as a full member of the formal "Social Register" world - under the watchful eye of Holden's sister Gertrude. While Sandra is delighted by some features of this new life, she is not at all keen on others - particularly in regard to clothes. The reader has to suspend disbelief over her attitude to being nude in front of other people - one crucial scene involves Sandra being as keen on covering up as any textile, while others have her shocking a range of relations, servants and outsiders with her disregard of the nudity taboo.

Keller's writing is competent rather than accomplished. The tale rattles along, but many characters are little more than clichés. Sandra herself could easily have escaped from an attempt by Enid Blyton to write a story about what happened to the Famous Five once they had all passed puberty - I think Keller's style is shown clearly in the extracts. Emotionally fickle, Sandra is intelligent and knowledgable. Physically, she is a first-class athlete and brilliant horsewoman, with a knockout figure and glorious red hair. The men she encounters often turn out to be cads and bounders of various sorts, and some of the women are just as bad, but (as with the Famous Five), there are more than enough good and upright folk around to ensure a happy ending. I think Keller wanted his heroine to demonstrate the advantages and benefits of nudism, but it would not have been difficult for him to re-write the story and remove all traces of nudity while retaining most of the plotlines and characters. On the other hand, there's not a trace of titillation or prurience in the book. Perhaps the tale is most interesting today for illustrating a particular evangelistic strand of nudism, a very between-the-wars philosophy of "a healthy mind in a healthy body". This is different from both the "who cares about sags and wrinkles" approach promoted in many naturist magazines and by most naturist organisations, and the "body beautiful" aspirations of today's non-naturists in their thongs and lycra gymwear.

If you find a copy, I suggest you read it for that mildly interesting historical perspective - then pass it on.

Ratings:

Nudity	Naturist nudity	A good read?

Last updated 2004 July 31.
 
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