This is Aline Bernstein; she was a well known stage designer in New York City when she met Thomas Wolfe in 1925. The two began a turbulent love affair that lasted several years. She wrote about this affair in her books The Journey Down and Three Blue Suits. Wolfe portrayed her as the Esther Jack of his novels The Web and the Rock and You Can't Go Home Again. In 1995 the University of North Carolina Press Published The Party at Jack's which expands on an episode that concerns the Esther Jack character. In 1979 author Carole Klein wrote a biography on Mrs. Bernstein entitled Aline.

"...She is a very exceptional person--the grit, determination, and executive capacity that men are mistakenly suppose to have, but good-humored and kindly always."

"After all the blind, tormented wanderings of youth, that woman would become his heart's centre and the target of his life, the image of immortal one-ness that again collected him to one, and hurled the whole collected passion, power and might of his one life into the blazing certitude, the immortal governance and unity, of love."