You are so right. I am reading West with the Night, an excellent book that didn't sell well when first published in 1942 for various reasons, from bad timing during WWII to being under advertised. Almost forgotten until 1982 when someone read Hemingway's letters praising it, found a copy of the book and persuaded the publisher to re-issue it. It became a best seller.
>Ernest Hemingway was deeply impressed with Markham's writing, saying "she has written so well, and marvelously well, that I was completely ashamed of myself as a writer. I felt that I was simply a carpenter with words, picking up whatever was furnished on the job and nailing them together and sometimes making an okay pig pen. But [she] can write rings around all of us who consider ourselves as writers ... it really is a bloody wonderful book."