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YEAR OF THE SPANIARD by Henry Castor

YEAR OF THE SPANIARD

By

Pub Date: Feb. 2nd, 1949
Publisher: Doubleday

The author of The Spanglers (1948) removes this story to Philadelphia in the year 1898, and center spots the Spanish American war, as experienced by Caleb Hawkins, wealthy Quaker, playboy and finding glory miserable, and Warren Spangler, reporter, honestly trying to find the answers. Their paths together, begun in college, cross over Susan, whom Caleb seduces and Warren eventually marries, and in Cuba, where Caleb as one of the Rough Riders sinks his patrician ways in trying to keep alive, where Warren watches the vainglory of Roosevelt, Richard Harding Davis -- and the sustained integrity of Stephen Crane. Returned home, they await the fate of 1899. Filled with companionable humor, with the donny- brook fair that was the war in Cuba, alert to the military horrors and inefficiency, this has more pace, vitality than the earlier book, a gallery of lustier characters.