MAGGIE

Set near the turn of the century, a warm yet resilient account of a young couple's first years of marriage in primitive western Mexico has an adult sensitivity as it handles a complex of problems- of personality, of beliefs, and of struggle against the land. A San Francisco socialite, Maggie Duncan is in love with a young presidio officer when Nicholas Field comes forcefully into her life. Maggie defies her family to marry him and they go south. Warned of what she will find, Maggie is still far from peaceful as she tries to adjust to an often lonely life, surrounded by dirt and poverty, in a land and among people that Nick loves as much as she dislikes them. A trip home to San Francisco almost brings a break, but Maggie returns to him, this time to face even greater problems. Nick has a new mine further up in the mountains, and when he leaves her she discovers she is pregnant. Determined to leave for good, it is a stormy climax as she makes her way down the mountains- into the arms of an old friend who sends her back to Nick... Fine fiction, this has a stamina and a realism absent from most juveniles.