RAPTURE IN MY RAGS

by Phyllis Hastings ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 14, 1954

A fey tale, this -- fantasy only in so far as that the story is told through the imaginative rendering of a girl who is, in the estimate of sober folk, not quite all there. She lives a lonely life with her soured elderly father; they have no common interests, he runs his farm in a haphazard fashion; she feeds him and keeps his house. His cruelty is indifference, parsimony, meanness. Then a change comes. She has made a scarecrow- then the scarecrow becomes a man. She accepts it as a miracle; denies the existence of a criminal- wanted by police- on their place, persuades her father to take him on as a helper. She treats him as her own creation, her own property. The summer waxes and wanes. She finds out what love means. And that it is a man she loves, a murderer in hiding. And finally, she kills her father, to save herself for her man, to save him. At the end, in a simple acceptance of the inevitable, he goes to give himself up, to shoulder her guilt. She learns she is carrying his child- and follows him. There's a charm in the telling which carries the reader along.

Pub Date: July 14, 1954

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Dutton

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1954

Categories: FICTION