THE FOREST AND THE FORT

The opening galley proofs almost defeated me, for they seemed to indicate that Harvey Allen had gone a trifle fey. Once behind me, with their symbolic recapturings and parable language, I got into the swing of his story and enjoyed it, though I don't think it has the richness and pace of his previous work, nor the enormous zest of Anthony Adverse. Once again he has turned back the pages of history, this time to the troubled period before the American Revolution, when frontiers were made terrible by incessantly recurrent conflict between whites and Indians. The story centers on alathlel Albine, who was captured by the Indians when a small boy, and raised as Little Turtle, the Chief's son. He had grown almost to man's estate before his white blood demanded recognition --and the most interesting part of the book tells of the conflict between his training and the tug of another world, of how he got his start there and how he made his adjustment, Fort Pitt and the country surrounding it saw this transformation, and alethiel proved his unique value in the struggle for survival ahead. It is a story of one youth -- but it is also a segment out of American colonial history, when wrong deeds were performed in the cause of freedom, and when wrong leaders set good men against each other. Full panoplied -- at times to the point of confusion -- but making a real contribution to deeper comprehension of a period shrouded in legend.