From those sad few of us who are struggling to flee from the Ulysses-Black Oxen-Jurgen mania, Francis Brett Young's latest book draws forth a sigh of relief. In "Pilgrim's Rest" there is realism to be sure, but it deals with the loneliness of the African jungle, and the ups and downs of life in an African gold-mine town. Like its contemporaries got it is outspoken, and yet it leaves one with the comforting feeling that perhaps the present-day light novel has not completely fallen into the hands of a corporation of psycho-sexualists.

The plot is perfectly adequate, and turns on the repeated attempts of a man to get started on a lone expedition to the heart of Africa after gold. He gets the key to the gold-mine, and incidentally to the address of the heroine, from the money-belt of a dead Englishman whom he runs across in the jungle. First he gambles away his money, then gets blown up and severely injured in a mine in Johannesburg, and finally falls in love and gets married.

Where the true merit of the book lies is in a remarkably vivid picture of mine life, and labor-union complications. The hero of the story refuses to join the union with the result that all the men in the mine turn on him to break him. We often enough hear from capital of the great power of labor, and from labor the opposite story, but in this instance we see a conflict between the man who takes pride in his work, and the men who want to get by, both representing labor. The description of the finale, the uprising of the unions, reads like a transplanted French Revolution. It is superbly handled. The vivid impression one gets of the hysterical mob rule, the just for revenge against 'the scab', and the quick change from hate to respect for their enemy after the fires have died down is unsurpassable. In conclusion a word should be said about the drawing of some of the characters. Pegano and "Ma" Pegano the fat Italians who run a very questionable hotel are priceless; Mrs. Worth, an old English lady with a longing for Devon is excellent, while it will be very hard to forget the Reeces, Mrs. Reece unreal, brittle, and colorless as a wax doll, and Mr. Reece with his ever-lasting fear for the valves of Mrs. Reese's heart. "How is she?" "Badly, badly. They say the valves are closing. Closing up. Stenosis is the word the doctor uses, but long words don't make it any better."

The only weaknesses in the book are the title and the end. Mr. Young should have been drawn the blind when the hero and heroine got married. "Pilgrim's Rest", is the title, and it looks suspiciously as if the sound of the name caught the fancy of the author, and was dragged in those twenty extra pages to give an excuse for being used as a title. However "Pilgrim's Rest" it is, and it is distinctly worth while reading.