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THE HEROES by Millen Brand

THE HEROES

By

Pub Date: April 17th, 1939
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

A far cry from The Outward Room, save in the choice of a subject verging on the psychopathic. It lacks the sensational aspects of the plot of the first, but in many ways is a finer and more mature book. The Outward Room was made the test book in a special promotion scheme, which carried it forcibly to a wider market than it might otherwise have found. That has laid a certain groundwork for another Millen Brand book, but this one is for that part of the reading public that found the psychological aspects of The Outward Room of more interest than the romance....This is the story of a Soldiers' Home, in which the inmates are suffering more from the depression than from the war. To this Home comes John Burley, one armed, deprived of the carpentry work he had done up to 1933 by labor conditions. But it is not his story alone. The author manages to convey the inner reactions of this group of forgotten men, increasingly sensitive, thrown back on themselves, facing the inescapable sameness of successive days, sharing an inner bond of mutual understanding and consideration. A very real and moving picture of the life, of the personal problems in drowning despair, futility, loss of freedom and usefulness. Depressing, almost too introverted for the average novel reader to stomach. But on Brand's name it should get a good press.