THE VALLEY

From previous contemporary novels, this returns to a time just after the Civil War, and the Diablo valley in New Mexico where Cavin Roy establishes a small empire, leaves his destructive mark (death in often his arbitrary answer to defiance) on the settlers who join him there and the family tied to him by fear. Now, when Clay his son, who refused to be his heir, returns there- in the hopes of salvaging his stepbrother's only surviving son (one had died- at Gavin's hands), the past is filled in: Gavin's marriage to the widow whose husband he had shot down and his belief (later disproved) that the child she was carrying- Clay- was his; her death; his second marriage to a much younger girl who had fallen in love with Clay and met the old man's bitter brand of Justice; and finally Clay's attempt to save the old man from the retribution he deserves.... Actually, a kingsized western, this is destined for that audience, while it is superior in the callbro of its sombre conflict between father and son and its judgmental lesson- that a life can only be saved- through death.