NEVER VICTORIOUS, NEVER DEFEATED

This is- for Taylor Caldwell- a return to the pattern established by her first great success, Dynasty of Death. And as-with that novel built on the munitions empire -- so in this built on the building of a railroad empire, people will be convinced they can identify characters and incidents in the vast family panorama displayed. Once again, too, she has built what reads like an authentic portrait of a people and a time, robber barons in the making, with their flashes of brilliance, their ambition, their ruthlessness, their sparks of vision, the elements of their fall inherent in their meteoric rise. The DeWitts, four generations of them, form the core of the novel, which spans some seventy five yeras. To be sure, the characters are drawn to type-the ruthless go-getter etched sharply against the shadowy backdrop of a grey figure, the man behind the throne. Cornelia DeWitt, daughter of Rufus who thought to inherit the power and could not forgive the brother who did, is seventy when the story opens. Then the pages of history turn back to her father's youth-and follow through her own flamboyant career, with the ramifications of a big sprawling family adding to the pattern of plot and counterplot. The book is better integrated, better written, than most of her recent work, and it has the intimate factual details of daily living in a luxury- loving era. A sure best seller, bidding for the market of her This Side of Innocence.