Traver, Robert

LAUGHING WHITEFISH [Signed]

New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1965. First Edition. Octavo, [6], 312 pages. In Very Good condition with a Very Good dust jacket. In black paper quarter binding with red leatherette boards. Jacket is black with red and blue lettering, wrapped in an archival mylar sleeve. Jacket shows shelving wear and wrinkling along edges, heavier on top edges, with bumping to fore corners and small scuffs on covers. Small crease to top corner of front flap. Price unclipped: "$5.50". Boards show light shelving wear, with rubbing along edges and bumping to fore corners. Small area of exposed board on the bottom edge of the front board. Shallow crinkling at head and tail of spine. Text block is moderately age toned along edges. Interior clean. Inscribed on front flyleaf by Traver using his real name, John Voelker, to Susan and Neil Sheehan: "For Susan and Neil Sheehan / with warm best wishes / John Voelker / Ishpeming / Sept. 15, 1965 / (To be published Oct. 18) / (What a tepid + inadequate way to express my appreciation Susan. How does one ship a Shetland pony to Saigon?)". Shelved in Room F.

1412666

Special Collections - Upstairs

Price: $350

NOTES

Inscribed by Robert Traver, using his legal name John Voelker, to Susan and Neil Sheehan on September 15, 1965, more than a month before the book’s stated publication date of October 18. The unusually personal inscription suggests a particular debt of gratitude to Susan Sheehan and places the association at a significant moment in the Sheehans’ lives, during the Vietnam-centered phase that would come to define Neil Sheehan’s career. Neil Sheehan had already reported from Vietnam for UPI and The New York Times, and he and Susan Sheehan would soon be closely identified with the American journalistic experience of the war. The reference to “Saigon” in the inscription suggests that one or both of the Sheehans were then in, bound for, or closely associated with Vietnam. Voelker himself was a lawyer, former Michigan Supreme Court justice, and novelist best known under the Traver pseudonym for Anatomy of a Murder, his 1958 legal novel later adapted into Otto Preminger’s celebrated film. Laughing Whitefish, published in 1965, was a historical legal novel rooted in nineteenth-century Michigan litigation involving Native rights, tribal law, inheritance, and the power of mining interests.

Second Story Books is honored to offer this item from the personal collection of Neil and Susan Sheehan. Neil Sheehan (1936–2021) and Susan Sheehan (born 1937) were a distinguished husband-and-wife team whose careers helped define American literary journalism in the second half of the twentieth century. Neil Sheehan, a Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for The New York Times, is best known for his role in bringing the Pentagon Papers to public attention and for his landmark book "A Bright Shining Lie", while Susan Sheehan built a parallel reputation as a leading voice at The New Yorker, crafting deeply reported narrative nonfiction on subjects ranging from mental health to social institutions, earning her own Pulitzer Prize in 1983. Their longstanding ties to major publications, particularly The New Yorker, placed them at the center of an influential cultural and intellectual network, and the books from their library carry added provenance through this close connection to the magazine’s editorial and artistic community.