Books: Great Grandmother

HEAT LIGHTNING — Helen Hull — Coward-McCann ($2.50).

Some people, thanks largely to their fathers and mothers, are still of some good in the world. Authoress Hull, in a remarkably feminine but unsentimental novel, shows the home-fire therapy at work, shows to what beneficent ends its Lares & Penates can keep house. When Amy Norton begins to feel that her marriage with Geoffrey is an experience outworn, that they are both becoming drugs on each other's market, she leaves New York, runs back home to Midwestern Flemington. Here, headed by old Grandmother Westover, called by everybody Madam, the Westover clan pursues its troubles mixed with fun. Like a small swarm of bees they cluster about Madam, with her silver-headed cane and common sense, as around a queen more fertile than they of purpose and strength. When Tom gets the servant girl in trouble he turns to the grandmother for money to satisfy the girl's father; but grandmother lets him wait. When her simple-minded hired man Curly gets drunk, attacks one of the boys who tease his addled wits, grandmother will not allow the family to shut him up. Curly was her husband's bastard; she had raised him. Gradually Amy is drawn into the family affairs; the memory of her own troubles begins to fade. When grandmother dies, her own troubles look unreal. Geoffrey comes out for the funeral. He has tried to cure his marital troubles by an affair with voluptuous Nina. After his night of infidelity he woke up with a headache like a hangover. By that token he knows his wife is the Woman in the world for him. Heat Lightning is the Book-of-the-Month Club's April choice.