Kirkus Reviews QR Code
A PAIL OF OYSTERS by Vern Sneider

A PAIL OF OYSTERS

By

Pub Date: Sept. 25th, 1953
Publisher: Putnam

Not the heady satire of The Teahouse Of The August Moon (1951) but a serious novel of a situation not under control in Formosa today. Linked to the story of the peasant, 19 year old Li Liu, who has been ordered to bring back the god of the hearth that looting soldiers have taken, is that of Precious Jade and her brother, who becomes known as Billy, as all three attempt to evade apprehension. Into their lives comes Barton, American magazine writer, who does not believe all he sees on his conducted tours and who, through secret talks with a leader of the nationalist group, learns a truer story of the conflicts within the country. And he is helpless, when vengeance catches up with Precious Jade and Billy, who are seized, tried and executed on trumped-up charges of Communism but he is able to restore Li Liu to his home. There Li Liu realizes he will be unwanted and seeks safety in the savage tribe from which he was descended. A tale that absorbs while it instructs and informs, this combines an understanding sympathy with a sense of current events and contemporary foreign problems.