COUNTRY PLACE

While this is holding reading, it lacks the character and the credibility of its predecessor, The Street. Where that had the intensity, the authenticity of racial sentiment, this second novel veers into melodrama, sustained by a violence of atmosphere, of emotion, in a story of white people in a small New England town. Johnny Roane comes back from the wars after four years to find that his wife hates him to touch her, to suspect she has another man on her mind,- Ed, who has made all the women in town. It is also the story of Glory's mother, an older, cheaper version of Glory, who had married Mearns Gramby for money but failed to collect it as old Mrs. Gramby lives on. The two marriages come to a climax against the destruction of a hurricane. Johnny finds Glory in Ed's cabin and leaves her. Glory's mother, trying to kill old Mrs. Gramby, fails... Fuelled with a certain fury, this carries a certain compulsion if less conviction.