BySAMUEL HOPKINS ADAMS
AT THE core of Mr. Adams’s story lies one of those freaks of nature so strange as almost to defy credence, even though its exact parallel occurred over a century ago in up-state New York. But the book is a first-rate mystery story in it - self, and it would be unfair, therefore, to give away the secret, particularly as the entire plot leads carefully page by page to final revelation of it.
The plot, however, is the least important element of the novel. What counts is the elaborate, colorful, and affectionate portrait of a canal town in its growing pains. Obviously Mr. Adams has not only gone back to the sources but has lived with them for a long time before writing his account of a young doctor setting up his practice. The canal created boom towns exactly as oil has in our own day; the pattern is much the same, except that for Dr. Amlie the job of bringing health to the community was harder than it would be for his modern counterpart. There was more filth for him to contend with, and more ignorance and prejudice in the upper strata of society.
It was the middle classes, the workingman, and the poor of the town who first came to appreciate Dr. Amlie, as opposed to his superstitious, bloodletting, bigoted fellowpractitioner. Mr. Adams can raise the reader’s pulse with an account of saving the life of a child who has the croup — and here I think he is even more successful than he is with the more melodramatic adventures on which the plot is cast. He has made himself thoroughly familiar with frontier medicine, rudimentary surgery, and backwoods specifics, as well as the simples of the old women living on the fringes of society.
It is genuine fun these days to find a book packed so full of color, lore, and historical information about the way our ancestors got to work in the dirt and set up a living for us. For the book is a big one and jamb full of all sorts of people: canallers, artisans, bankers, lawyers, preachers, immigrants, and a heroine who is genuinely fetching. It sprawls all over the place, but so did Palmyra and its sister towns. If you consider such things dull, this is not your book. But if you enjoy finding out that the pompous claim of Cooperstown to the game of baseball has been a fake these many decades, read Mr. Adams. He can tell you different —about that and a lot of other things. Random House, $2.75.
WALTES D. EDMONDS