James Salter. 
 
Random House: 1975. First edition. Hardcover in a jacket. Octavo. Soiling along the top of the jacket. Back flap of jacket has a fold. Boards are faded along the top and the bottom. Back board near the spine has foxing. Corners of the boards are bumped. Pen marking near the heel of the spine. Trace foxing along the top edge of the text block. Some fading on the attached endpaper in the back. A little bumping to the corner of the text block between the fore edge and the bottom edge. 308 pages. Very good. 
 
Our pick for the underrated American novel. It is a family versus freedom story, and Salter writes lines that take you from domestic to stratospheric in less than a clause. Again and again and again. 
 
“Life is weather. Life is meals. Lunches on a blue checked cloth on which salt has spilled. The smell of tobacco. Brie, yellow apples, wood-handled knives.”