HELEN TEMPLETON'S DAUGHTER

1910 -- the Mississippi Delta -- and the family problems of the Templetons present a modicum of melodrama and a maximum of domestic detail. Ann is called back to Fall Leaf plantation when her grandmother is ill and has to fight the domination of her mother as she tries to make her own adjustment to giving up her painting and carrying on plantation affairs. There is the battle against old ways and methods, to save the stock and the crop, the attempts to reach an understanding with the Negroes and their attitude to the old and the new, and the omnipresent danger of the land having to be sold. To complicate the issues that confront her is crusader Michael Donahue, from the wrong side of the tracks and about to write a book about the South, who, in wooing and winning her, is won to her side to save the land; the current affair her mother is carrying on with the new doctor; and the threat to their labor from remembered voodoo. A brew that leaves Ann with scars but sights for the future. Sensible and without sensationalism.