THE NEW ENGLAND STORY

by Henry Beetle Hough ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 22, 1957

Substitute Malville for Templeton; Captain Ahab for Captain Enoch Adams; Moby Dick for Bildad's Locker -- and you'll have the springboard which provided the impetus for this uniquely ""New England Story"".... Edgecomb Hartwell found it so, but in his almost year long stay on Martha's Vineyard -- the town of ""Dinton Port"", one time whaling seaport- he traveled far from his original goal. His was the dream to seek out the letters, diaries, records that would identify Templeton and his captain and add to the frustratingly incomplete record of a great writer's sources. Instead he changed from a brash, assured young writer-publisher, off on a quest, to one of the ""natives"" he discounted at the start. He came to know the many ramifications of the Adams' story, both Enoch and his three wives -- and his wastrel son, Argalis, whose legitimate daughter, Miriam, thought she held inviolate the secrets of the family- and Nancy, illegitimate offspring of a Pacific liaison, who came ""home"" to seek her birthright. But most of all it is Harriet Craddock's story,- Harriet, ""fattish, seamy and soiled- and comfortable""- who posed as a town's eccentric, was niggling over small things- and generous over large, and who came to accept her lodger, Edgecomb, as sincere in his interest, and to take him into her confidence, because he had come to understand. It is a story meriting the definition ""far out the coils of the New England line"" -- and while it is tenuously discursive at times, in final analysis it paints an authentic portrait of one phase of New England. Literary Guild selection plus the author's loyal followers in the Vineyard Gazette insure a good send-off, for a rewarding book.

Pub Date: Jan. 22, 1957

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Random House

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1957

Categories: FICTION