Except for the fact that there's a bit of adultery on the side, this might pose as a candidate for Sunday School libraries -- New Style. It seems to us priggish and dated. The story of an alien growing up in farming country, making his way in spite of obstacles, and almost destroyed by a designing woman; a study of the progress of a boy from adolescence to manhood, with the contributing factors. The author has written his own boyhood into the story, so that at times there is a note of authenticity, of sincerity, which cannot be ignored. As the Director of the New School for Social Research, his contacts and fame are wide and the book is due greater publicity than the average first novel.