THE OTHER ROOM

A popular, but not cheap, handling of what is highly inflammatory material, this tells the story of protected, pretty Virginian Nina Latham, who accepts a position to teach in a New Orleans school, once there learns it's a Negro school with a mixed faculty. Fighting her initial inclination to leave, Nina stays on and after the first emotional jar of mixing with Negroes- gains an intellectual respect for them she had never had. Attracted to Leon Warwick, who might have passed, time breaks down all barriers, both admit their love, and though Nina is willing to marry him, Leon refuses- knowing that his work for his race will be jeopardized by a white wife. Nina, returning home, can no longer live there after this experience- goes north. A sustained story of romantic attraction, racial taboo, not on the literary level of previous firecrackers but certainly readable.