LEGACY

A thoroughly likable book, a good family story and good Americana, in minor scale, which traces a father and five sons from boyhood in 1905 through the war years. Adam Stoddard is a genuine patriarch, confident that his progeny need his strength and guidance rather than the whip hand or emancipation. The five boys are intelligently differentiated. The war proves a testing ground for each, through marriage and through active service, and it brings strain and tragedy to the father who lives intensely through each of his motherless sons. Their stability is endangered through Hester, nymphomaniac wife of one of the five, who pursues each brother in turn. But eventually all win through. It is the sort of book that will regard personal enthusiasm with sales, and -- given the right sort of word of mouth publicity -- it should go.