A Different War

Abstract Susan returned to Provincetown in the summer of 1938 and appeared, in Edmund Wilson’s estimation, “much better for her years in the West,” although she “seemed to have resigned herself to become an old lady.”1 At sixty-two, she was grayer, more lined, and frailer than she had been in the early 1930s, but she was more determined than ever to work. She was also happy to reconnect with friends, particularly Katie and John Dos Passos, and she showed her old commitment to activism when, as one of her first acts, she formed a “defense committee” to block the local beach club from buying the house next to them and opposite her.2 If Susan had forgotten the sea and the special winds of the Cape during her time in Chicago, she was reminded of the potential fury of both in September, when one of the most severe hurricanes of the century slammed into land near New Bedford, throwing out all communication with the Cape. Many residents believed the Cape to have been flattened by the severity of the storm.