In Old Kentuck

THE GREAT MEADOW--Elizabeth Madox Roberts--Viking ($2.50).

The word Kentucky connotes thoroughbred horses, Bourbon whiskey, hotheaded, white-headed Southern colonels drinking mint juleps before breakfast. In 1774 Kentucky meant a promised land of fabulous fertility, beyond almost impassable mountains, 500 miles from the outposts of civilization. Author Elizabeth Madox Roberts lifts the curtain from 150 years, shows you Kentucky as it was then.

Diony Hall, daughter of Virginian pioneers, settles in what was still the wilderness of western Pennsylvania, marries her neighbor Berk Jarvis, goes with him the two-months' journey across the mountains into Kentuck, over the dim trail made by Explorer Daniel Boone. There they settle at Harrod's Fort, one of the three white settlements in the country. No one dared live outside the stockade: the Indians, hostile in their own right, were also encouraged by the British, who paid a bounty for Yankee prisoners, Yankee scalps, brought to Detroit. Once Diony and her mother-in-law wandered too far from the fort: Shawnees killed Elvira, left Diony for dead. She recovered, but Berk vowed vengeance, went off with three companions to hunt the Shawnees, even up his score. Only one came back. Two years later Diony married the survivor, thinking at last Berk must be dead. But Berk had been captured, not killed; taken to Detroit, he escaped, found friendly Indians, eventually came home. Then Diony had to choose which husband she wanted.

The Author. Some of Author Elizabeth Madox Roberts' ancestors came from Virginia over "Boone's Trace," settled in Kentucky in 1803. There she lives, near Springfield, writes her books. Tall, light-haired, lissome, she is unmarried; her publishers do not know how old she is. Other books: Under the Tree (poetry), The Time of Man, My Heart and My Flesh, Jingling in the Wind.

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