Books: As War Made Them

THREE CAME HOME (317 pp.)—Agnes Newton Keith—Little, Brown ($3).

When the Japanese moved into North Borneo in January 1942, the British colony in Sandakan got its orders: "Meet the enemy, resist passively, do not cooperate. We cannot defend you. Goodbye!" Among the 80 men, women & children was Agnes Newton Keith, U.S. author whose Atlantic Monthly $5,000 prizewinning Land Below the Wind had made Borneo seem like a grim, if fascinating, place for so genteel a lady (TIME, Nov. 19, 1939). She had decided to stick it out with her two-year-old son and her British husband, who was North Borneo's Director...