Evening star., 1935-02-06
NEW BOOKS
AT RANDOM
Margaret Cermond.

MELISSA STARKE. BY Amulet
Andrews. New York: e. p. Dutton
& Co.
Here is another Main street. Not
the blatant, fragrant Main street Of
the Middle West, nor the cold, austere
Main street Of New England, but the
whispering, malicious poisonous Main
street of the sunny, sentimental South
back in the days Of poke bonnets and
pantelets, when, through some now
incomprehensibe sense Of chivalry, de-
liberate murder masqueraded under
the immunizing cloak Of honorable
duelling, when the young men Of
aristocratic families were encouraged
to be blades and the young ladies were
stripped by discipline Of every vestige
of natural impulses and swathed in
a smothering armor Of stupidity and
ignorance.
The author Of this remarkable first
novel is a newspaper woman whose
span of life reaches back to that
transitional period Immediately fol-
lowing the Civil War in which q
stricken and bewildered populace faced
each day with a growing sense Of
alarm over the economic chaos into
which it had been plunged and for
the safety of its traditional social
order. She was born and brought up
in the South. Her knowledge Of the
era and Of the people. plus the trained
sense OF values acquired through news
paper experience, gives her woIk a
distinctive quality Of authenticity. She
is the widow of a prominent newspaper
editor, and the signature under which
she writes in nom de plume.
A small town in Georgia, with its
| once palatial homes, spacious lawns
and luxuriant gardens showing the
ravages Of neglect. and its picturesque
social life slipping steadily into the
background, is the home Of Melissa
Starke. There is no grudge in Mels
generous heart against the turn Of
fate that had transformed ease and
gaiety into hardship and discomfort
for in her ten years Of life poverty
has been her lot and she has no COM
parsons. But that she is a misflt in
her fathers family she has never been
allowed to forget and the only rebel
lion that flames within her sensitive
nature is against the perpetual nag
glng and picking campaign conducted
by the entire horde Of her relatives.
~
DR.. Hoxie Starke's marriage to q
beautiful girl who had spent most Of
her life in New Orleans had been a
blow to his family. But Starke of
the male gender could, Of course, do
no wrong. The bride from a dis
tance" must therefore be constantly
reminded that though her home is
with her husbands family the distance
still remains. And Lizette's position
is especially unfortunate because she
happens to have French blood in her
veins. Little Mel has no virtues In the
eyes Of her fathers family, but many
her foreign" mother.
In this character-crushing atmos-
phere, plus the prevailing process Of
thwarting the natural development Of
girls into normal, intelligent young
women, 1t is no wonder that Mel
turned to the trees and the flowers and
the sky for comfort and for a life Of
her own creation. But she was not
allowed complete JOY even in her pas
Sionate love for nature, for when she
exuberantly exclaimed: Isn't this
Just a beautiful world? It's so beau
tiful I'd like to hug it all right up to
my heart" she was informed that
God does not intend to make this
world so beautiful for us that We will
want to live in it forever. That is
! why He has put dangers in it like
lions and wolves and scarlet fever and
poison oak and snakes. He does this
to make us long all the more to be
with Him in the golden streets of His
pearly kingdom"
Difficult as the road Of childhood
has been for Mel, she finds the road
Of young womanhood still more hard
to travel. Having filled her mind with
every conceivable evil construction
that may be placed upon the way she
walks, the tilt of her hat, the color Of
her dress or the smile with which she
greets an acquaintance, these kindly
relatives lose no time in whispering
their own convictions about their
beautiful niece. The gossip-mongering
tongues of cousins and aunts, whose
exaggerated sense of their own holi-
ness has excluded them from knowing
anything of the real joyousneSs Of
life, make complete job of reducing
Mel to q state Of misery and unhappi-
ness.
Meanwhile Lizette has become o
weakling under the domination Of
Hoxie Starke, Of whom Mel lives in
| daily terror, for she has discovered
the secret Of his temperamental out
bursts and his violent RACES against
herself and he is aware of her knowl-
edge. The last drop in the cup Of Bit
terness brewed by the Main streeters Of
the aristocratic little Southern town
! is saved for MelS return from a
Savannah hospital where she has
undergone an operation for a serious
, injury to her spine. Too precious a
suggestion is the circumstance of q
young girl going to hospital in an
other city not to grasp the opportunity
| to make the most of it. The cousins
and the aunts whisper again.
Open rebellion flames at last in the
heart of the innocent victim of the
wickedness that hides its rot behind
stately porticos and damask-covered
walls and Mel strikes back. Her first
move for freedom ends in typhoid
fever. Then New York, the shackles
of Main street discarded ana career
of her own choice that leads to bril-
liant successes in a field to which only
few women are grudgingly admitted.
The scandalized family reaches its
treacherous hand to New York and
/ across the sea. but Melissa Amelie