Books: Cold Corn Bread

LIGHTWOOD — Brainard Cheney —Houghton Mifflin ($2.50).

Lightwood, a first novel, is the account of 16 years (1874-1890) of war between a northern lumber corporation and squatters who, since the early 19th Century, have inhabited the pine barrens of southern Georgia. It carries the Corn family (squatters) through the whole of it—lawsuits, fraudulent surveying, sabotage, murder, abortive revolution—and, on the side, develops some creditable focuses in the enemy camp and in the mind of an ambitious and unscrupulous small town lawyer. By the time it is over Micajah Corn has lost nearly everything...