....is the one between art and money and this is the not very convincing story of an artist who wanted to cross it without selling his soul to Mammon. Annie's youngest child was Tom, who, in the years of the depression, never found a job he could like, who, in industrial St. Louis, hated the things that industry stood for, who every night brought home the message of failure. Finally Annie took a job as cook for one of the city's oldest families and Tom moved into a garage of his one-time teacher and started to paint. He did odd jobs to pay his way; when he went to see Annie he used the Coort's front door; he knew Gil Timothy's weaknesses; he ignored his effect on Eda Coort Timothy for he loved Dandy next to his painting and planned to marry her some day. The story reaches its climax with Tom's one-man show and the failure of Gil's dream to save his wife's fortune, with Tom's marriage to Dandy assured as is her happiness and his faith since his work had won some measure of recognition, with his certainty that they can find a way. While the story is ostensibly Tom's, only Annie and her staunch independence and perception comes wholly to life. There are no race problems here as there have been in her earlier books.