SWAMP SHADOW—Katharine Hamill— Knopf ($2).
Promises made by most first novels are rash. But the promise of Katharine Hamill's Swamp Shadow has good collateral behind it. Her tale of poor whites on Mississippi's Gulf Coast is neither dreary case-history nor melodrama plastered together with notebook dialect, but an ably written, objectively presented story of some forgotten men & women of the U. S.
Her white trash are authentic but attractive. Old Man Roper, unregenerate patriarch, had fathered a rascally and shiftless brood. Thomas lived off in the swamp by himself, distilling shinny and...