HEARTSTONES

An odd sort of story, less coordinated than Bernice Harris' Purslane and considerably less interesting than her last- Janey Jeems. This is really two stories- the dovetailing is not very expert. The first third of the book is a story of idyllic young love with a quality that recalls parts of The Yearling. Then when adult intervention smashes young hopes and aspirations, the story breaks, in both sequence and mood, and jumps to the old age and gentle madness of Henrietta who had been the dreamy young girl. Driven by the all- pervading fear of the community and its attitude towards their father, a deserter in the Civil War, the sisters had lived in solitude on Haw Island- ""Ura haw""- there to exist in almost total self-sufficiency. With the second World War- and another young deserter- they are brought again into focus with the world. Tenuous throwbacks to the old tragedy are too slender threads for weaving the two parts of the story into a fully realized whole, and the interest lag in the middle section hurts its chances for popular appeal.