DOWN WHERE THE MOON IS SMALL

Llewellyn, who has never quite equalled How Green Was My Valley, again changes scenes and this time writes about a small Welsh colony in Patagonia in the early 1900's. The prose is obscure and densely Welsh-English, and the story is often told backward or not at all. Nevertheless the subject holds, the characters and scenery are wildly colorful, and the very obliqueness of both style and narrative translates the reader into a totally different world.... Huw Morgan, carpenter and newcomer to the Colony, marries Lal, a beautiful girl and superb horsewoman, the heiress to vast acres. Lal goes off to Buenos Aires to protect her land from a lawsuit, while Huw becomes an Army contractor, building roads and wagons, and makes a fortune. Meanwhile he falls under the spell of an Indio princess, Lliutro, and Indian life. To escape Lliutro, he joins Lal and their son in B.A. But wealth and civilization cannot hold him, and he returns to the Andes, their child is killed, Lal rides over a cliff to her death, and Lliutro takes Huw away with the tribe and keeps him drugged for years.... Based on historical fact, Llewellyn's story has a genuine feeling of frontier life in the wild mountains, of the Indians, and of the mystery of a faraway new land.