PSYCHE

While still a very young child, Psyche is kidnapped from the home of her wealthy family. Her kidnapper, a mental case, abandons the child and she eventually ends up on the doorstep of Butch and Mag Moran, two lazy, ignorant and phenomenally kind people who depend on the mine for their meager existence. Psyche's instinctive grace and intelligence endear her to the childless couple and with love they strengthen the already superior instincts of the ""kid"". But Psyche is pursued by a need to determine her true origin and her destiny, and in search of this identity she follows Nick, a dedicated artist enamored with her beauty and indifferent to her needs. When Nick has exploited Psyche as a model he releases her to a world about which the nineteen year old girl knows nothing. Her innocence protects her against the various vices to which her beauty exposes her, a residence in a brothel, constant contact with a nymphomaniac, and ultimately through many unlikely capers, restores her to the mother and father who all these years have been waiting. A somewhat spurious plot is redeemed in this first novel by the author's technical skill and it is stylistically more than competent.