THE WILLOW CABIN

A woman's novel of love which has a sure touch in emotional values, a nice sense of portraiture, and which is definitely more literate than most. Illegitimate and imprisoned by her mother's and adopted stepfather's rigid respectability, Caro's first success in the theater is the occasion of her meeting with Michael, famous for his surgery, and married to wealthy, American Mercedes. Caro determines to have her man rather than her career, tosses over her chance at a big part to follow Michael to America, to live and love with Michael on his return to England. She hates the woman who, she understands, will not give Michael his freedom, knows her only through hearsay, and patterns herself to be his perfect partner. They steal their time together, even during the War, and Michael's death, of an overdose of sleeping pills, sends her back to the theater. A successful play sends her on a tour of America, and there she gets the opportunity to hunt down Mercedes and learn the slow unfolding of the truth about Michael, to understand better the man who had taken her whole heart. Neither emotionalism nor theatricalism mar the effect of this contemporary story.