THE WHITE TOWER

Don't sell this as straight adventure -- but an absorbing blend of adventure and philosophy, of the pull of the mountains, the urge to climb, to scale a particular because it is there, and challenges. There is something of Fair Stood The for France, in that this is a story of an aviator -- an American -- forced the rest of the has been killed, the plane smashed -- of his waiting, under and secrecy, for the chance to escape back to his own lines -- but in this case there is the coinst of his ming down in Switzerland, where by rights he would be inter, and his being found by Andress, guide and friend of his boyhood days of holiday , twelve years before. It is Andr who will get him out; it is the inn-keeper who his identity from the officials; but it is Carla, friend of boyhood, who fi him again with the old urge to scale the unconquered White Tower. A party is made up, an exserted group, including a French writer and , an elderly English scientist, one time of the mountain troops, himself prese Carla, Andre as guide, and the aviter, Martin Crdway. The story is and of what it does to men, of how the past and present merged, in the of the of the group; of the thing that happened to each one, , the scientist, at one point, Delambre, the at another. Of were formed into the final effort because one was an American, the . Of the tender growing between Carla and Ordway. And always, of the the the terror, and the challenge of the -- with of the finest writing of the season -- a rewarding book, even in the where the is slowed down by the inner seekings of the Selection for September.