THE WAY WEST

While The Big Sky was strong meat for young adults, this book will pass muster. The story opens in Independence, Missouri, with the organization of a wagon train. It follows the familiar pattern to Oregon and the break up, but lends the story tremendous vitality, so that the reader feels himself a part of it. There is tragedy and joy, birth and death and marriage, romance and frustration. An interlude in which a married man, spurned by his own wife, turns to a sympathetic and lonely girl, will make some adults question giving this to young people. But Guthrie has handled both the emotional and the physical aspects with restraint and taste.