COMING HOME

This book was originally scheduled for Winter publication and reported P. 21. It is a book one does not forget. This is no glamorous romance of a young marine hero and a lovely Polish girl -- though the romance is there. But it is there against a grim background of Pittsburgh's steel furnaces and riverside slums; against the machinations of criminal corruption and crooked politics, permeating and manipulating little lives, of a sort of American fascism which Joe finds when he comes back from Guadalcanal, with a Silver Star on his blouse. In his absence, the girl, Stella, has had a baby -- and has found that there's a price to pay for getting and holding a job if one happens to try to k the just of the man in power. Joe has been trained to fight beasts. He sees no reason to stop -- and finds himself the victim of manmade laws and so-called justice. How he and Stella meet the challenge; how they win a few to their side; and how a courageous couple win the right to start life anew makes a holding novel. At times Cohen labors his point; at times the book is lush, overwritten; at times it is sordid; but Cohen has something important to say and the courage to say it.