DRAGON'S WINE

The place is Duncan's Bottom and its two worlds -- of the cotton fields and of the sawmill -- are divided when Bud Tate takes over the one and Homer Grooves the other The old squire, arbitrary in giving and taking away, gives them, as boys, a challenge and it is Homer who has captured the wild white sow. When all three marry, Homer, in spite of Kate's apparent earthiness, has no children. Driven, by Kate, by the particular markings of fate, Homer -- with his talisman of the white sow -- goes far along the road to power and, in killing the squire and achieving mastership of his house, sees Kate go mad, drives out Bud and becomes as crippled in spirit as he is in body. Alone, still believing in his might, he is faced with the squire's widow and son, with Kate's bloody suicide -- and with the white sow's maddened defense of her new piglet which makes a violent end of him and his luck. This returns to the earlier Walk Through The Valley (1956) for its saga-like quality and makes little use of the lighter touches that marked the more recent The Insolent Breed (1959). But there is still the larger than life atmosphere which seems to be this author's individual, American mark, which makes for telling effects. A special audience here.