(1985-1966) Also wrote as: Perry Lindsay, Joan Sherman
Peggy Gaddis, the primary literary identity of Erolie Pearl Gaddis Dern, was a name so commonly seen, for so long, on the covers of so many unassuming, unheralded topics with such interchangeable titles from the 1930s to the 1960s that it would be easier to believe it was a “house name” assigned to a variety of hack authors through the years than that it belonged to one actual person churning out those hundreds of works all by herself.
A native of Gaddistown, Georgia, Erolie Pearl grew up with dreams of being a writer. She attended tiny Reinhardt College and worked for periodicals in Atlanta and then in New York, where she edited movie fan magazines and love pulps. In 1931 she married John Sherman Dern, a member of a traveling minstrel troupe. Her first topic-length works, published under the name Peggy Gaddis, were erotica and racy love stories for Godwin, a cheap lending-library press that specialized in such material and also published some of Jack woodford’s work. Godwin brought out no less than six of Gaddis’s novels in her debut year of 1935: Eve in the Garden, Unfaithful?, Shameless, Wedding Night, One More Woman, and Respectable? The following year Godwin published another six by Gaddis (including Courtesan, Harlot’s Return, and Yaller Gal) and two by Gaddis writing as Joan Sherman (Wife or Mistress and The Earth His Mistress). Later in the decade the author began to re serve her Gaddis byline primarily for innocent love stories with elfin titles like Magic of the Mistletoe (1936), Tomorrow’s Roses (1938), and Love Is Always New (1938), the majority of these published by Arcadia House, another low-rung developer supplying the five-and-dime stores with lending libraries. She also used the name later for her many nurse novels, a subgenre with which Gad-dis’s name became almost synonymous. She continued to write the racy stuff, but most of it was published under such pseudonyms as Perry Lindsay, author of such Phoenix Press classics as Passion in the Pantry (1941), Impatient Lovers (1943), and Overnight Cabins (1947); James Clayford, whose daring fiction included The Private Life of a Street Girl (1950) and Divorce Bait (1950); and Gail Jordan, author of The Love Slave (1943), Lost Virgin (1945), and Sin Cinderella (1948).
A listing of Peggy Dern’s titles tells a kind of social history, the lengthy series of topics about the lives of young female health care workers (City Nurse [1956], Nurse in the Tropics [1957], Nurse and the Pirate [1961], A Nurse Called Happy [1963], A Nurse for Apple Valley [1964], Betsy Moran, R.N. [1964], Heiress Nurse [1968]) an indicator of the importance of this career path to women in those years of limited opportunity. Even more revealing, perhaps, is a Gaddis title from 1959: Kerry Middleton, Career Girl, this vague description enough to indicate Ms. Middleton’s independent spirit. Typically, these novels featured sweet yet plucky young women eager and able to make their way in the world, though never averse to finding the man of their dreams and settling down to a traditional life as wife and mother.
As expected of anyone who could write hundreds of topics, Dern was a dedicated professional who hit the typewriter six days a week and produced a strict minimum of 3,000 words per day, a schedule that could produce a finished novel every three weeks. It was a job like any other, and hard work, Gaddis would say, but it was a job she loved and would not give up if she had “inherited a million.” Of writing, she told an inquiring publication, “It’s a sort of drug for me, for which I hope no one ever finds a cure.”
Works
- As Good as Married (1945);
- Bayou Nurse (1964);
- Beauty to Burn (1937);
- Beloved Intruder (1958);
- Blonde Honey (1950);
- Blondes Shouldn’t Marry (1947);
- Brass Bound Hussy (1951);
- Brave Heritage (1942);
- Bride on the Loose
- (1951); Burning Desire (1941);
- Cadet Nurse (1945);
- Carolina Love Song (1966);
- City Nurse (1956);
- Clinic Nurse (1963);
- Coast Guard Girl (1941);
- Come into my Heart (1950);
- Cottage Colony (1936);
- Country Girl (1951);
- Country Nurse (1956);
- Courtesan (1936);
- Dark Passion (1944);
- Dr. Jerry (1944);
- Enchanted Summer (1960);
- Eve in the Garden (1935);
- Everglades Nurse (1964);
- Farm Wife (1953);
- Feather Brain (1940);
- Female (1953);
- First Love (1944);
- Flight from Love (1950);
- Flight from Yesterday (1943);
- Flight Nurse (1946);
- Frost in April (1945);
- Future Nurse (1961);
- Georgia Tramp (1951);
- Girl Alone (1952);
- Girl Next Door, The (1949);
- Girl Outside, The (1960);
- Grass Roots Nurse (1958);
- Guest in Paradise (1954);
- Harlot’s Return (1936);
- Heart’s Haven (1945);
- Heart’s Retreat (1937);
- Hill Top Nurse (1964);
- Homemade Heaven (1942);
- Homesick Heart, The (1955);
- Hotel Girl (1951);
- Hurricane Nurse (1961);
- Impatient Lovers (1943);
- Intruder in Eden (1960);
- Island Girl (1952);
- Island Nurse (1960);
- Kerry Middleton, Career Girl (1959);
- Kisses Are Petty Cash (1952);
- Kiss Love Goodbye (1942);
- Lady Doctor (1956);
- Leona Foreman, R.N. (1962);
- Love at Second Sight (1940);
- Love in the Dark (1950);
- Love in the Springtime (1936);
- Love Is Always New (1938);
- Love Is Enough (1959);
- Lovely but Damned (1950);
- Lovers Again (1952);
- Magic of the Mistletoe (1936);
- Maid for Love (1950);
- Man Hungry Widow (1953);
- Midnight in Arcady (1940);
- Moon of Enchantment (1959);
- Mortgage on the Moon (1940);
- Mountain Interlude (1948);
- Night Nurse (1955);
- Nurse and the Pirate (1961);
- Nurse and the Star (1963);
- Nurse Angela (1964);
- Nurse at Sundown (1958);
- Nurse at the Cedars (1962);
- Nurse Christine (1962);
- Nurse Ellen (1966);
- Nurse Gerry Hilary (1958);
- Nurse in Flight (1965);
- Nurse in the Tropics (1957);
- Nurse Melinda (1960);
- Nurse Polly’s Mistake (1960);
- Occasionally Yours (1951);
- Office Mistress (1952);
- Once a Sinner (1949);
- One More Woman (1935);
- Orchids for Mother (1947);
- Overnight Cabins (1936);
- Peddler of Dreams (1940);
- Perry Kimbro, R.N. (1950);
- Piney Woods Nurse (1961);
- Rapture for Two (1950);
- Respectable? (1935);
- Return to Love (1937);
- Roses in December (1955);
- Scandalous Nurse (1954);
- Settlement Nurse (1959);
- Shameless (1935);
- Shanty Girl (1953);
- Sin Cinderella (1948);
- Song in Her Heart (1943);
- Spring Harvest (1941);
- Substitute Nurse (1962);
- Suddenly It’s Love (1949);
- Tent Show (1945);
- Their Hearts to Keep (1939);
- Thirty Days in Eden (1938);
- This Too Is Love (1959);
- Tomorrow’s Roses (1938);
- Too Many Husbands (1951);
- Two Women (1936);
- Unashamed (1945);
- Unfaithful? (1935);
- Unknown Lover (1952);
- Wedding Night (1935);
- Wild Orchids (1961);
- Woman Alone (1951);
- Yaller Gal (1936);
- Young and Dangerous (1943)
As Joan Sherman:
- Wife or Mistress (1936)
As Perry Lindsay:
- Passion in the Pantry (1941)
As Georgia Craig:
- Nurse Comes Home, A (1963);
- Deadline for Love (1944);
- Emergency Nurse (1963);
- Four in Paradise (1946);
- Junior Prom Girl (1962);
- Love Is Here to Stay (1966);
- Sandy (1958);
- There’s Always Hope (1959)
As Gail Jordan:
- Blonde and Beautiful (1948);
- Gambling on Love (1947);
- Godiva Girl (1948);
- Innocent Wanton (1950);
- Lost Virgin (1945);
- Love on the Run (1944);
- Love Slave (1943);
- Private Office (1940);
- Weekend Husband (1943)
As Peggy Dern:
- Betsy Moran, R.N. (1964);
- Dr. Hugh’s Two Nurses (1960);
- Leona Gregory, R.N. (1961);
- Nurse Angela (1965);
- Nurse’s Dilemma (1966);
- Palm Beach Girl (1961);
- Persistent Suitor (1961)
