A MAN'S PLACE

Here's a Spanish Sacco and Vanzetti, dating back before 1925, with the tangled web of oppression, crooked politics, distorted justice and corrupt church interwoven into the story of two simple villagers, caught in a web of deceit. One sees the village characters at close range; one senses the fears and superstitions and second hand thinking that rules their lives. A man has walked out on a nagging and unfaithful wife; the two men who saw him last are made the scapegoats and accused of his murder; the wheels of the law grind out their conviction, torture, imprisonment and eventual release, unwanted and unemployable. And then the man returns, too late to save the lives he has wrecked. The story is told with sparse detail, in unemotional baldness of statement and dialogue. Much of social significance is implicit in the material, but the telling will not appeal to the average reader.