HURRY HOME TO MY HEART

Small Town South was a nostalgic looking backwards over the life in a town from which his forebears came -- a picking up the threads of memory, of association, when -- as a fairly successful actor -- he goes back to the old town. In this novel he again captures the feel of a small town in North Carolina, in a love story of American teen-agers during World War II, -- a delightful ingenue and a jive-happy sailor -- and of how they both grew up, she at home, dreading what the future might hold, and he on a Normandy beachhead on D-Day. He conveys successfully the innocent enthusiasm and hope of youth, the abortive attempts of civilians to understand the veterans. The book has the freshness, vitality, emotion of the bobbie-soxers -- the impact of violent, horrible death on a growing boy, the frustration of the returning boy hero grown wise and old beyond his years. Sincere-genuine-imaginative, but keyed more to the young people's own level and those who know them, than to the average adult reader.