"Reality" Unrealized

FLOODS OF SPRING--Henry Bellamann --Simon & Schuster ($2.50).

The thesis of Floods of Spring--that Lucifer started wrong and incurably remains so--is worthy but obvious. Angry Hero Peter Kettring, a particularly obstinate victim of the "pride of self-determination," decides, when the Civil War ends, to discard the "top-heavy thinking" of his cultivated forbears. He sets out to seek "reality" from the ground up.

The ground is at the edge of the Missouri River, not far from the town of Kings Row (TIME, April 15, 1940). Peter works it devilishly hard, makes a smart deal with the railroads. His farm becomes the talk of the community he scorns; he is a rich man. But thanks pretty much to his own hardheadedness, one son runs away, another fares worse, he loses his wife, the river ravages his land. He winds up on the verge of "a void where there were neither directions nor dimensions." Peter is sympathetically realized, and he is surrounded by some refreshing characters. There are genuinely tender domestic scenes, and a deeply felt sense of what a house, a farm, a son, a grandchild can mean. Yet Floods of Spring, which sets out to be a philosophical novel, is more often an over-insistent tract.

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