THE VIXENS

The success of Frank Yerby's first novel, The Foxes of Harrow, insures a ready market for this new novel, which measures up to the expectations held for him as a story teller of no mean stature. Once again a lusty, full-blooded novel of New Orleans and the plantations. The period is later, post Civil War -- and the central characters are entirely apart from the people of the earlier book- Laird Fournois, who fought with the Union Forces, and came back to his native Louisiana to try to bring to life the place he had loved, Plaisance; and Denis Lascals, who loved him, beyond belief, beyond self and reputation and sanity and hope. But there was evil on the other side in the person of Hugh Duncan, vicious effeto, who held the whip handle over powerful forces of destruction, had his spies everywhere, used blackmail when it was to his ends, and saw that men he was through with were disposed of. It was he who engineered Laird into marriage with the mad and lovely Sabina; it was he who eventually blackmailed Denise into becoming his mistress. It is an angry bitter story of the sacrifice of all that might have been good in the horrors of Reconstruction; Laird fought a losing fight to give the Negroes a chance- but the forces against him were too great. And he lost. The pattern of the story is involved, but it has a sweep and pace that carry it through. There's romance and adventure and passion. It's not a tale for Miss Nancies. It has lust and blood and enormous vitality. And it will sell.