CELIA GARTH

With a record of wide popularity, from Deep Summer in 1937 to Jubilee Trail in 1950, this newest novel, of Charleston in the last years of the Revolution, should have an assured audience. Celia Garth, orphaned and awaiting her twenty first birthday to be free of family supervision, is apprenticed to Mrs. Thorley's sewing shop and ambitious to prove her dressmaking ability. Through Capt. James de Courcey Rand, of the state militia, she is hired by Vivian Lacy, five times married and mother of six children, and at Sea Garden develops her talent, becomes engaged to Jim and learns to know Luke Ansell, Vivian's favorite son and one of Francis Marion's men. The British siege of Charleston and its results in starvation and eventual undue savagery, Jim's death and Luke's enlisting Celia as a spy for Marion's core of resistance, are followed by a succession of exiles, confiscated lands, the intricate, dashing manoeuvers to slow down, harry and distract Cornwallis that Marion carried out, Celia's marriage to Luke and the eventual return to a Charleston needing years of restoration. A wide canvas of people and events, this mounts its story with the little details of war time living, the Tory-rebel conflict within families, Charleston atmosphere of homes and plantations, and the stamp of the conqueror-spoils pattern. Assured.