THE MAN WHO WENT AWAY
By
His first novel in ten years -- and one cannot help but wonder what impelled him to write it now. There is no sense of immediacy about it; it dates undeniably. It is a story of regeneration in the forest primeval, as a man who had left years before returns to seek a deserted wife and child, and finds a strange threesome, June, his grandchild, blind and pure of heart; her evil aunt and foster mother, his daughter, and now head of a lawless gang, and Will, whom June loves, a forester who is a free spirit. Crime and punishment, revenge and retribution, bring sorrows but make better people of them all.