The Key West citizen. [volume] (Key West, Fla.) 1879-current, 1926-03-15
EAGER VINES"
tBy Bonnie Busch)


is an active club woman, the ma
tional vice-president of the
League of American Pen Women
and holds office in many other
women's organizations. She is
spending the winter at Miami.
The fundamental problems of
humanity have neither temporal
nor geographical limits, and the
well guarded portals of the rich
constitute as frail protection
from their pain and poignancy as
do the sagging doors of the poor
est howell.
In Eager Vines, the new novel
by Bonnie Busch, is presented the
unceasing quest for something
more satisfying by the men and
women who have been lowered
with every material advantage
and who find in the cup of world
ly prosperity only the bitter dregs
of establishment.
Eager Vines is a significant
study of the childless mother and
the motherless child, two of the
touching problems of universal
life. Bonnie Busch has a deft
pen, a facile and colorful style,
and a subject that is very near
her heart, a happy combination
that has produced characters that
live in her pages.
The story is laid in a smart
country place in Long Island,
where the rift in the matrimonial
lutte of Thalia and George Liv-
ingstone has just become apparent
after a few years. George, a
wording, had become enamoured
by the youth and innocence of
Thalia, and had married her from
the school room. Having culti-
waited assiduously a taste for the
caviar of life, the bread and but
ter of domesticity soon palled on
his palate.
George simplified life by MAX
ing his own desires his only law.
He is the ruthless and dominant
type that goes after what he
wants-and gets it. Whether or
not he likes it then is another
story. In Georges speedy exist
ence there is no time for regret,
futile or otherwise. In fact the
word regret is not in Georges
glorious lexicon of self-indul-
gence.
George is still proud of his
beautiful wife as an object dart,
but he is bored and tired; COM
pletely Indifferent to the world
and its opinion. The habit of
listening to the song of the sirens
reasserts itself and when pastures
new or a cleaning shoulder or
come-hither eye loom on his ex-
ploring vision, he answers with
alacrity.
George has two passions
money, and what is Biblically
known as husks. He succeeds in
his collection of each of these,
and far from finding the husks as
indigestible as they are said to be,
George thrives on his goddess diet.
Mrs. Busch did not feel constrain-
ed to make George finish in any
state of sweetness and light.
For Thalia, there. is no outlet
in the futile ant-hill activity of
society or in the clandestine af-
fairs in which the pampered wo-
men around her found diversion.
Thalia is left with an empty heart
and the idleness which great
wealth permits. There are sharp
" defined pictures of the life of
these people, their hangers-on,
the vapid, the good and the bad
all vainly seeking who-knows-
what.
To fill the void in her life,
Thalia is lead to the thought of
adopting child. In her search
she goes to an.orphanage in Geor-
gia, a duh gray place of institu-
tional care. There are poignant
and unexaggerated scenes, frag-
ments of child life under the care
of those who, whatever else their
qualifications, cannot claim love
among them. The children grow
in the shadow of these Swallowed
walls like pale plants, unwarmed
by the sun Of love.
The personalities of these
motherless children stand out:
from Evvie who hides a heart of
tenderness under a chestnut burr
exterior, to the tiny tot who prays
every night for a Mommy of her
own.
ITALIA Livingstone goes there
seeking one child to love, and
takes unto herself four: and it is
these eager vines of humanity
with their varying treats of good
and evil that solve Thalia's prob
lem and lead her at last to a more
personal land Of hearts delight.
We close this book of empty
hearts and fun Golfers, hugging
to orr hearts the picture of the
lonely little ones and hoping that
each dear little head