JEREMY BELL

I liked this better than anything he has done since The Anointed and yet- in sober analysis- it is difficult to see how he compels one's concern over the fate of his two young characters. Sam and Jeremy had been chums always; Sam was going to be a miller, Jeremy a blacksmith, and they were going to marry the twins they had always beaued. But they wanted to see the world outside Dawn's Mill before it was too late. And they get their fill of adventure and misadventure in the process. They had dreamed of that world as alluring, but no sooner were they in Chicago than they'd had their fill. But pride forced Jeremy to talk Sam into signing up with a lumber company for a job which took them into southern Arkansas, and industrial peonage, their future mortgaged to the owners who-some fifty years ago- made slaves of the poor innocents caught in their web of glib talk. Sam and Jeremy escape- are captured- break jail- and ride the rails to freedom. At the close, a kindly soldier turns good samaritan, and gives them the meal that set them straight again. Very good reading in good hairbreadth Harry tradition.