Abstract

The Lure of the Land

The article provides information about three novels on land, "Mortgage Your Heart," by Sophus Keith Winther; "Straw in the Wind," by Ruth Lininger Dobson and "The Invaders," by Stuart David Engstrand. Novels about the land are one crop which never fails. Flood and famine, lost farms, the burden of debt, and plagues of locusts do not interfere with the harvest. In fact, if anything, they increase the yield, for you cannot have a farm novel without a villain, and the weather and the banks serve in turn or jointly to provide an adversary. Mast farm novels are likely to be above the average of the novels in any given season. They are serious, simple, natural; in novels as in life the weather is an unfailing topic of conversation. And descriptions of men working in the earth and under the sun until they are soaked with sweat inspires in the city reader at once a feeling of guilt and a deep sense of relief.