Free Air (Lewis)
This novel opens strikingly with a "modern woman" of the US East Coast in the '20s (well, 1919) fighting her very expensive convertible through the bad, muddy roads and still rather wild west (destination: Seattle) with a sick father in tow. She then has to decide what to do about the lower-class, but decidedly handy, rather intelligent and definitely persistent suitor that she attracts as she tries to deal with her car troubles. I grew quite fond of Claire Boltwood and Milt Daggett as the novel progressed and he respectfully stalked her (yes, an oxymoron) on her way. They managed to escape being just stereotypes of their social class and to show some realism (and some real humour) in how they found their way to appreciating each other's qualities.
On the whole, though, I thought the novel dropped off a bit in the second half when the road trip was over and the focus shifted to the laughable pretentiousness of Seattle "good society".
Lewis' writing is studded with little gems of wit, like "Mr. Martin was an unentertaining bachelor who entertained." He also comes up with entirely unexpected adjectives that surprise and then work beautifully in context - the example I noted was "stingy, flapping stairs". On the other hand, he is relentlessly contemporary, which means that there are references that I simply couldn't decode, like "Why did I ever get a car that takes a 36 x 6?"
Nonetheless, a surprisingly good central female character by a male author in this period. And it's a very clever title, referring both to the signs you would find in gas stations (I remember them) over the air pumps for your tires, but also to Claire's sense of liberation from her east-coast and class restrictions.
