THE INTEMPERATE SEASON

A far-remove from Tarkington's Seventeen is this record of Robert Fleming's seventeenth summer in Connecticut, compounded of family scandal from the past and local tragedy of the present. He gains some sense of maturity from the discovery of adult feelings for Melissa, his first love, from whom he has been told to stay away. When, through murder, he learns how Melissa has exploited his immaturity, he awakens to the shaky basis of his newly found assurance, but manages to integrate the summer into emergence from his teens. A first novel of sensitive approach to adolescent growing pains -- against a conservative family pattern, with melodrama highspotting its development.