GOODBYE TO THE PAST

by W. R. Burnett ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 5, 1934

Burnett has won for himself a sizable and more or less predictable market. Here's a book that will add to it, considerably, a book which seems to us his best writing to date. A story told in reverse, tracing from 1929 back to 1873, the history of Bill Meadows, a self-made man, who in the span of his life epitomizes the typical history of three generations of American riches. Told in homely, direct and human style, the story wins sympathy for the man, in his old age barely tolerated in the ultra-respectable and fashionable household, the roots of which he planted; and the interest in him grows space as we follow his back history, -- seeing him the victim of moral standards as accepted in the early years of the century, recognizing the fight he has fought and won, to raise himself by his own bootstraps from the beginnings laid in mining towns, his strength and ingenuity pitted against renegades and Indians and the riff raff of the old west. Burnett succeeds in this volume in doing what Benet just failed to pull off in James Shore's Daughter.

Pub Date: Sept. 5, 1934

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Harper & Brothers

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1934

Categories: NONFICTION