JACOB'S LADDER

Reissue in single volume of a long short story from the collection, When The Whippoorwill published in 1940, by Scribner, deservedly stresses Marjorie Rawlings' rare gift of conveying a warmth of perception, without sentimentality or crudity in her portrayal of the poor whites- ""Florida crackers"". She captures the very feel of the background as her story shifts from the woods to the swamps, from inland lake to the Gulf waters, from a Yankee tenant house to an exposed camp in the palmetto scrub. With paucity of words, she gives one deep insight into the starved souls of inarticulate ""rabbity"" Florry, who found her mate in Mart. Their poverty seems not of the shiftless, decadent Tobacco Road variety, but rather the hopelessness of ignorance and a strange fierce pride, though the ""civilized"" world and government and Nature seem leagued against them. A memorable story, told in limpid prose, with the dialect integral to its rhythms.