Sons of the Stranger

AT ITS best, Fielding Burke’s new novel concerns the bloody war and the legal monstrosities by which our Western mineowners attempted to crush the first labor unions. The period is indefinite, but appears to be the late nineties and early nineteen-hundreds. The place is indefinite, too, being an imaginary state called Uvardo, located west of Chicago and east of California. The details of an old-time labor war cannot fail to be interesting, and while the author sticks to strikes, dynamiting, and the horrors of martial law, Sons of the Stranger is good reading.

Too much of the novel is devoted to matters which have little bearing on industrial history. There is a hero, who has worked in the mines, studies to be a labor lawyer, deserts the cause for money and success, and finally saves his soul by returning to Uvardo and the still-uncertain battle. There are eight or ten subplots, ranging from the troubles of an Indian tribe to the unhappy position of Negroes. Because Miss Burke lacks the skill of quick characterization, the people involved in all these side episodes are never more than names.

Miss Burke’s intention to write what is called an epic novel is so clear that the reader cannot help noticing that she has not done so. The tough, authentic background of labor war is diluted by the author’s romantic view of her characters, and the characters themselves dissolve into shadows against the realistic background. The author’s sympathies are warm, and always on the right side, but they have led her into exploring far too many aspects of a period that was complicated enough at the simplest level. The result is a book so overcrowded with everything that it fairly bursts its binding.

PHOEBE LOU ADAMS