Day of the Trumpet

THE Maine lobstermen of the last half of the nineteenth century were a tough and independent lot, in harsh competition with the sea, the weather, and each other for their precarious livelihood. Here is a novel about them that is both historical and regional without sacrificing the validity of its characters to concern with time and place.

Justin Sand and his Negro companion Hiram Eddy grew up together on the rugged Maine coast, dreaming of futures rich with bigger hauls and higher prices. Miss Colwell’s novel spans their boyhood and youth, and ends with the decisive crisis of Justin’s life after his heartless yet unpremeditated betrayal of his gentle friend. For Justin was a man to whom prestige and the dollar meant more than human beings. Nothing that could happen to people—suicide, madness, childbirth, or the alienation of friends and family — could touch him so deeply as the idea of his own success.

Miss Colwell writes in prose as precise and strong as the Yankee men and women she describes. In a few words she can give the feel of a New England fall day when “the noontime warmth had an edgy sweetness like the red-veined Hesh of the early apples.” She can set down the tricky Maine dialect so accurately that one is never conscious of affectation or odd spelling, but only of its richness.

The one misgiving about this competent novel arises from the frequent reliance on symbolic descriptions of scenery and weather to convey the mood of the people. This oblique approach, combined with Miss Colwell’s

fondness for understatement, often produces a tone too gaunt and austere to quicken the reader’s full sympathy for her characters.

MARY 1’INUHOT