GENERATIONS OF MEN

A newcomer- and a find, though he's not everyman's meat. Look for your market among the readers who like Gipson's Man, for the spirit of the setting, the deep understanding of the healing power of nature and natural men, and the love of man for his dog. But this is not a derivative book. Hunt is seeking something deeper, a symbolic quality that his central figure, young Jeff Beecher, is groping to understand. He has come out to Oklahoma, to the grandfather he had known in his childhood, seeking a security he had not found in the ast, with his mother. Left alone, rootless, he finds himself baffled, disappointed, when old Samuel seems only a rather shiftless, unsuccessful rancher, who cares only for his bounds, his hunting, his friends. It is given to a neighbor, Hardin Buck, part Chetops Indian, to give Jeff what he needs in himself, a belated acceptance of a way of life, a realization that he must put down his own roots. There are memorable scenes in this:- the dawn hunting, for fox, for quail; the Indian ceremonies which Buck had sought to preserve through his Indian museum- in the funeral, in the dance. There is too a sense- all pervading- of a frontier that still survives, a frontier of place and spirit.