THE STREET OF SEVEN MONKS

Six years ago Lippincott published The Edge of Darkness, which had the bad luck to conflict with Steinbeck's The Moon is Down, similar enough in story and setting to hurt the sale of a book by an unknown author. But I've not forgotten it, and the promise it gave, so particularly interested in this novel, which bears out that promise....He can write, can William Woods. Though it's a grim story he tells- unpopular in substance and setting -- it is well worth reading. Germany is breaking up. Three prisoners escape a camp near Dronden, and start the weary way back through a collapsing, defeated country to France and home. The story shifts from Gravier, dreaming through five years of that return, scarcely daring to face the possibility of change in himself, in Catherine, the English bride he had left, to the town in the Haute Savoie where his strange family lives and waits. The picture of the madness let loose with ""peace""- with the dangerous elements released -- with their effect on tensions Loosened, brings realization of the many tragedies enacted in little lives in todays Europe. There's terror and violence and hate and fear -- and beauty too. Wonderful story telling-perceptive creation.