PEBBLE IN A POOL

Born in Kansas in 1879, Dorothea Frances Canfield Fisher, is however in her mind and the mind of her readers, as much a part of Vermont as maple sugar. Elizabeth Yates in her biography of Mrs. Fisher follows her life consecutively from her early childhood when she discovered the meaning of words, her erratic years in Paris with her artistic mother, her love of music which was threatened by life long bouts with deafness, her extraordinarily fortunate marriage which reenforced her loyalty to Vermont, her vast literary productivity, her service in France during the first war in which she lost her son, and her continuing strength in the face of physical disability. This biography is hardly distinguished in terms of excitement and drama. It is, rather, a solid and impressive testament of one woman's outstanding achievement in terms of her interpretation of an American intellectual and moral liberalism.