AND NOW TOMORROW

This has of the manner -- if not the matter -- of And Tell of Time, but the character of Emily, who tells her own story, is less subtly drawn, the con less imperative, the final impression more superficial. Emily belonged to ""the royal family"" of the millowners in a town dominated by the mill. She had few memories of her dead mother to pull her back across the river, to the mill people, but could not quite accept the blueprint laid down for living by the aunt who brought her up. She was at odds with her gay and frivolous younger sister, but it didn't matter much. Then came first love, an official engagement, complete absorption in Harry, clearly an opportunist and self seeker -- and then down into the depths, with total deafness, the result of mening. Two years of doctors -- then despair, lightened only by her love, though marriage was continually postponed. A new young doctor, hope canceled), and with it, eyes opening to the misery of the other side of the river, doubts of her sister and her lover. Labor troubles, in the first days of groping toward unionization -- and incredible blindness to a second side of the question in Emily who should have been more awake, lead to certain social conflicts, unresolved when strikes and violence succeed fairly orderly efforts to get recognition on the part of the labor forces. And finally, her world crashes, financial security in shaken, her eyes are opened -- and even her returning hearing means little. Then it is the young doctor who brings her sharp up against reality and sanity, and holds out hopes of tomorrow. Rachel Field wrote two fine novels -- this cannot measure up to them. But it is interesting reading, though not important, and her style is fluent, pleasurable, her plot sense and character sense competent. Serialized in McCalls.