IMMORTAL LONGINGS. By Ben Ames Williams. E. P. Dutton & Co., New York, 1927. $2.00.

THIS is a book that should please Mr. Williams' Saturday Evening Post readers. This, however, is as far as the book will go, for Mr. Williams, indeed, is your true Saturday Evening Post author, and such he always will be. Unfortunately, I say, because at times he rises to a certain height. His descriptions of the Maine countryside are better than the usual pretty twitterings spent on that subject, and, better still, he has breathed the breath of life into his rustic heroine, and really evolved a figure with the classic serenity of a modern Ceres.

In his plot, however, he has successfully overcome any dangerous tendencies toward skilful craftsmanship, and has turned out a most amazing burst of oozy sentiment. The jacket description of the plot follows: "Temporarily bored with civilization, its services, its ease and its sophisticatons, Walter Overlook breaks away from hs successful business in New York, and plays hookey in the Maine farming country, in the very house where he was born. After fifteen years he meets his boyhood sweetheart and finds her perfect in her country setting, but no longer of his world. This experience has an unexpected ending."

Unexpected is hardly the word for that ending, it is fabulous! Lo, what does our good Walter do but marry the girl, and settle down to a life as a farmer, leaving his great financial business, his New York apartment and his four menservants in the lurch. The reader is expected to sympathize with this move, and, if the experience of the reviewer is any criterion, fails pitifully. All this despite the assistance of a scene at the end, when a New York swell of Mr. Overlook's acquaintance hits the trail to Maine to find out what has happened to that financier.

Dapper and citified in spats and white piping on his vest, this elegant gentleman steps into the Overlook homestead and meets the missus. During the course of the conversation Overlook allows that despite his fifteen years in the city, he has always been a country lad at heart, whereas his visitor and his charming wife were born to the civilized life of cities. The latter looks at Mrs. Overlook with "a twist of hopeless longing in his eyes," and replies in a low voice. "I was born in a Iowa, and so was she."

As for the title, "Immortal Longings," the reviewer fails to find the connection. Walter Overlook has a very natural longing for the lady of his choice, whom he looks upon rather indelicately as "a piece of fallow and unseeded ground that lies steaming and smoking in the sun." There seem to be no other longings.