ARDEN ACRES

The story of the Chapin family who lived in one of the shacks on a mushroom development fifty miles from Chicago. And particularly the story of Joan, just beginning to grow up, of Loretta, her spoiled, erotic mother, who would never grow up, and of her grandmother, who held the little family together by her patient, unrelenting attack on the forces of disintegration and corruption. There's good old-fashioned sentiment, and there's a note of modern cynicism, and it's a book that deserves more attention than the average first novel.