TOP LINEMAN

Good adventure and good morale builder, in a story of a youth turned down because of bad eyesight, who belligerently fights his own private war in his own job as top lineman. His alertness, aggressiveness and general suspicion of his fellow workers almost wrecks a carefully laid trap for saboteurs, as a power line is put through to a hidden, secret plant. But in the end, a foolhardy gesture saves the situation -- and he realizes that there is a battle to be won at home. I liked the sense of authenticity in the factual material about the work of putting through a line against difficulties of physical layout, against deliberate planting of seeds of discontent and defeatism in the ranks. Good reading, for men as well as boys.