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Un Feu Devorant This dramatic image graces the book jacket of Un Feu Devorant (meaning "A Devouring Fire"), a 1964 french translation of Phyllis A. Whitney's 1956 novel The Trembling Hills. In the image the main character, Sara Jerome, wears a white lace mantilla (or scarf) around her shoulders, while atop her head sits a tortoise-shell comb that once belonged to her great-great-grandmother Consuelo Olivero—its fanlike back shimmering with rhinestones. As Sara gazes into a mirror, imagining herself as her distant spanish ancestor, walls of unseen flames surround her in a foreshadowing of the devastation to come with the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. As with so many of Phyllis A. Whitney's novels, her publishers worked with some of the world's preeminent illustrators to develop images for her book jackets and paperback covers. The illustration for Un Feu Devorant was created by Jef de Wulf, a pseudonym for well-known french illustrator René Brantonne. The Trembling Hills was recently reissued in paperback as part of the Hodder Great Reads series "celebrating the best and most-loved popular classics of the 20th Century." You can also read about some of the locations featured in the book! |
