Frontier Fiction

DON'T You CRY FOR ME--John Weld--Scribner ($2.75). John Weld's novel recounts the ardors, agonies and occasional pleasures of a wagon train in its ox-paced procession, in the year 1846, from Independence, Mo. to California. The collective difficulties stack up, in the course of nearly 500 pages, into considerable pain and narrative power. The troubles of the naively conceived individuals are considerably less impressive.

THIS LAND Is OURS--Louis Zara--Houghton Mifflin ($2.75). By pure bulk of fodder this 776-page narrative of the Revolutionary frontier will satisfy munchers of romance as much as its mixture of admirable material and thoroughly uninspired talent will disappoint critics. In a Conestoga wagon, young Andrew Benton crosses the wild Alleghenies, gets into practically everything out there from the 1760s on, up to and including the last Indian war dance at Chicago in 1835.

WILD GEESE CALLING--Stewart Edward White--Doubleday, Doran ($2.75). Still to be written is a good novel about Alaska pioneers, Jack London's glamor books about the Klondike notwithstanding. Staking claim to be the first, this story of Alaska's plain pioneers is the 577-page tale of an idyllic young couple who drifted to Alaska from the Pacific Northwest, let the gold rush go by, while Husband John trapped, hunted, logged, did odd jobs, also proved he could outshoot and outfight the best of them. No less sentimental than prolific Author White's 21 other picturesque Western romances, Wild Geese Calling need not discourage any novelist aiming to stake a rival claim.

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