Novels For Early Spring Reading

IN this story of the vague distances of our national history Miss Roberts has chosen to sing of those hardy men and women who fought their way arduously over Boone's trace into the promised land of Kentuck to found the beginnings of our great western empire.

In the restless days of the Revolution, Kentuck was a land of milk and honey to the struggling settlers of the Virginia back-woods. Only the most daring of hunters had been there. Such men as Boone, Harrod, and Logan, each had returned with glowing tales of boundless fields of cane, of the rich soil, and of the numberless deer and buffalo. Aroused by these reports, little groups of pioneers fought their way over the trace to establish communities in the new country. Kentuck was not, however, the Utopia of all men's dreams. The Indians held it unlucky and used it for their battle ground. They resented the foreigner's intrussion, doing all in their power to hinder the building of the new forts.

With a full realization of these hardships Diony Hall and Berk Jarvis, somewhat indifferent to the news of fighting in New England, and a Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia but possessing a strong love for each other, set their backs resolutely on the civilization of their youth and rode forth into the promised land. Their adventures on the trail, their life among the rugged Titans who held the frontier forts against the redmen and the King's men, the pain, toil, and rewards, which they shared alike with their neighbors, form the theme of Miss Robert's narrative.

With the skill of a great composer, the authoress establishes her main theme upon the plan of a symphony. The environment and teachings of the main character Diony Hall form the motif recurrent throughout. Behind the sudden death and vivid reality of the frontier life in Kentuck runs strands of memories from his days in Virginia. Such repetition of familiar ideas is helpful in conveying to the reader the longings of the pioneer woman's soul. The prose is melodiously in keeping with symphonic structure, possessing a meaty sensuousness seldom encounted in modern authors and rising at points to poetry.