Books: Exotic Pennsylvania

BEFORE THE SUN GOES DOWN—Elizabeth Me/zger Howard — Doubleday ($2.75).

It is the year 1880, and spring has come to Willowspring, Pa. (pop. 4,000). "The sun, like an eager lover with searching fingers, [runs] penetrating rays into every crevice. . . ." Slowly "the earth yields [with] a sweet resistlessness . . . like the ultimate surrender of a virgin. Hens fly every which way. ... A cow moos and a bull . . . bawls. . . . Lillian sits under a great sugar maple, wondering. . . ."

Lillian is wondering because she is...