A book by a local author that features a now mostly forgotten Fort Worth scandal rippling through the country club set is coming back.
“The Inheritors,” by Philip Atlee, whose real name is James Young Phillips, is a scathing debut novel from a then-25-year-old author who grew up among the monied elite in and around the River Crest Country Club. Now, 86 years after the uproar that caused the Fort Worth Public Library to reportedly keep its copy under lock and key, TCU Press is bringing the book back.
This TCU Press edition, set for publication Sept. 15, will be the first time the book has been formally published and widely available to readers since its original release by Dial Press in 1940. When World War II began, paper was rationed and book publishing slowed to a crawl. A paperback edition, published with the title “The Naked Year,” was published by Lion Books in 1954. Since then, editions of “The Inheritors” have been hard to come by with copies going for as much as $5,000 in the collector’s markets, said Dan Williams, director of TCU Press…