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THE GIRLS FROM THE FIVE GREAT VALLEYS by Elizabeth Savage

THE GIRLS FROM THE FIVE GREAT VALLEYS

By

Pub Date: Feb. 24th, 1977
Publisher: Little, Brown

This goes back to the Montana of Elizabeth Savage's Happy Ending--since then her novels of the ""random buffeting of chance"" have sometimes led to real blows. Still she always writes the kind of book any kind of woman will find all too identifiable. Now we're back in the Thirties with five girls who'll soon be ""graduating High""; they'll be well into life before it's over, the life for which they have such high expectations, except for Doll. She's prepared to settle for less--just marriage. But Hilary, their Miss Brodie, is confident and decisive and usually has her way. She doesn't know that her gentle mother is dying of cancer. Janet isn't too bright and Kathy has academic aspirations. That leaves only Amelia to account for. She's the most beautiful, second only to her frayed, restless, widowed-young mother who was left with a retarded infant she doesn't quite know what to do with. Or does she? Deliberately? Somewhere, right at the start, you're told that ""one will make it. One won't."" You may not guess which but surely you'll want to find out since Mrs. Savage is one of the few writers who closes in on people you know, caught in fault-free situations, ensuring your sympathy well past the nth degree.