Half-Holiday (1938) hearkens back to the late 1930s when the businesses in the sleepy Florida town of St. Acacius (St. Augustine) close down on a Thursday afternoon. The fashionable housewives are playing bridge, and Irma Lee Bryson goes off to a tryst with her lover in a hotel. Three men, Jim Bryson, the owner of Bryson’s Nite and Day Garage; Dan Wilder, the part-owner of the St. Acacius News and Paul Leith, a writer, bump into each other at Nip’s Fount of Youth Sweet Shop and decide to borrow a rowboat and go fishing on the river – they don’t return. The novel focuses on the reactions and characters of their wives: Irma Lee Bryson, Phyllis Wilder and Eunice Leith; and on Kate Claire Stuart, the wife of the aviator who flies out to search for the lost men. Once again, Pope reveals a cross-section of women, most of whom are dependent upon their husbands, some for their financial well-being and some for their sense of identity. While this novel doesn’t have the psychological depth of Old Lady Esteroy, it is an appealing window into the times and lives and dilemmas of couples in a very particular time and place. ( )