COME IN AT THE DOOR

Does superstition permeate some lives in our own country as relentlessly as it does the lives of the natives of the West Indies? A ""conjur"" lies back of a hanging that colors the life of small Chester, who was taken by his negro nurse to see the spectacle. The relations of the whites and the blacks, the horror of the scene, the background of superstition hang like a dark shadow over an otherwise fairly happy childhood with relatives who have taken him away from the ""deep South"". He returns, after an unhappy marriage and his father's death, and again the shadow is upon him. Good picture of a port town in the Mississippi delta, up to the present time, excellent characterization, direct, significant in the telling. The interludes which break the thread of the novel are intrinsically good, though the symbolic character will annoy some readers. COMPANY K had a good press and a fair sale. This book establishes March as more than a ""one-book-man"".