New Hope

THE Reverend Mr. Greenwood and his family arrive in New Hope, spend two years there, and move on to another pastorate. His hosts for the first two weeks and his main prop in the church during his stay are the family of the Millers — Dave, Bertha his wife, Edie, Bess, and Irene his daughters, and Clarence his six-year-old son. The novel is the quiet chronicle of the two years. It is the sort of story that might easily have been just sweet or inane. New Hope is a sample American town of the eighteen-nineties in which the church is the centre; anybody who reads serious books or paints pictures or plays the piano really well is looked upon as a little queer; and everything is as new and bright as paint. Good cooking, sewing circles, church and town festivals, and gossip are the staple interests of the women, and business and boom of the men. It sounds terrible in this brief outline, but Miss Suckow does not find it so, nor do we. Perhaps her picture is lacking in browns and blacks, and yet, given the time, place, and people, it is really true enough. Written out of love and some homesickness for a past time, it is amusing, charming, and heartening. The author knows infallibly what she is writing about and has the art to convey it with a sure hand. The portraits of little Clarence and his playmate Delight, the minister’s daughter, are so amusing and touching that anyone who misses them is making a great mistake.

R. M. G.