HONEY FROM A DARK HIVE

Poverty- and allen roots- lend their inflection to a story of first love and first and second generation Jews and Italians is a coal town in Pennsylvania and for the young, the loyalty to the old, who have not relinquished their traditions or their rights, becomes a burden. For Judith Harris, who comes back to Weston to teach, this is particularly true; the silver cord is uncut- and her mother expects her to marry a nice Jewish boy. But she falls in love with Pletro D'Angelo- and to prevent their marriage- Riggie Harris is ready to move to another town- is then the victim of a stroke. Pete and Judy quarrel; Pete finds a momentary satisfaction in cheap, easy Anna Maria; but when he and Judy are reconciled, his mother this time finds her means of condemning them- and he dies, in a mine accident....Miss Kavinoky is not one to control her prose- or her characters; they are either carrying on- or are carried away by gusts of feeling-and her sequences of physical intimacy are expansive and explicit to the point where the more reticent reader may care to withdraw.