The rise and fall of Hugh Bart of the Mississippi Delta, this is a life portrait of a man to whom success came smoothly, quickly, though without bringing happiness. He acquired an old plantation, Solitaire, and with it as wife, Florence, of social if impoverished prominence. Early in his career Bart gained money, prestige, power, and in his middle years settled down as man of property and family man, with only surface contact with wife and children. In his last years, his money gone, his plantation sold, his aspirations for his children faded, Bart dies alone, much as he had lived...There's definite quality to the writing here, an elegiac cast to the portrayal of the man, and a real reflecting of the deadened stillness of the Delta country. For the specialized not the popular market.
