EAGLE ON THE PLAIN

With by no means the narrative momentum of The Lonely Steeple (1945), this is a first person- often circumlocutionary chronicle of Plutarchus, an abandoned, shiftless community in upstate New York, and its one moment of rebellion. Plutarchus, where only outcast foreigners and dirt farmers lived, was also the home of the Breneros, who made an illegal living out of applejack. Eighteen, and in love with a local girl, Poggi Brenero runs away to make a fluke success as a roadhouse entertainer, comes back home at the moment when his younger sister Mary dies of gas fumes in the well, and the authorities- investigating- find the still, arrest the Breneros. Escaping, Poggi evades the police, incites the people in defense of the old couple, and makes the first show of defiance Plutarohus has seen. Eventually giving himself up, he looks forward to better years ahead- once his sentence is served. There's not the dramatic interest- nor the human- of the first to assure a market for this.