CORONETS AND BUCKSKIN

The narrator, in her sure and whimsical maturity, remembers her young life in British Columbia as a struggle with poverty; as a petty class conflict, with her own well-educated, idealistic home verging between the crude but sincere neighbors and the gay-wealth-but-false local bourgeosie; and as, more profoundly, an inner antagonism of her longing for acceptance, a ""role"" or ""place"", and her longing for independence at all costs. It is a story of chintzes, beloved animals, a village idiot, teacups and silverware, childhood hurt, marauding cougar, domestic service for a proud adolescent, love mingled with a man's faithlessness and political ambition, and a suspected murder that turns out to be suicide. The author has a delicate ear for the ""Skomish"" assault on the King's English, and a felicitous knack for the colorings and textures and emotional nuances of her scene. She is at times a distressingly modern psychologist, and at times a superior social observer.