Flowers of Desire — Frederick Manfred

From back cover: Carla Simmons, a golden blooming young girl, is torn between the strict and solid values learned in her small Midwestern community and the startling strength of her own awakening womanhood. With her parents' reluctant consent, Carla follows the man she loves, now a soldier to the big city, where he betrays her, and in the aftermath of her shattered dream she is subjected to physical and emotional violence she could scarcely have imagined in the robust innocence of her upbringing. In the twenty-second novel by this powerful writer, the reader is immersed in the early 1940's-an era when the private struggles of everyday Americans were being fought against the backdrop of the greatest conflict of the country.